After an emergency trip to a pipeline job in Minnesota, my weekend plans were all messed up. I returned home Saturday morning at 1am, after flying out of Houston on Thursday night, so I was too dang tired to fish Saturday. Had a crew scheduled to go out on the Contender on Sunday, then got the call Saturday evening at 6pm they were having to cancel. I decided to run my boat on Sunday since it would only be the wife and I, then my youngest son and his cousin were able to go, so we made a crew of 4 total, which is perfect in the Blazer Bay.
Decided to launch at Rollover, and I have decided after this trip, it will be a long time before going back down to FWC. The extra mileage on the road is so much easier than the road down to FWC, just can't cross into reserve before daylight. So we started off really good since the travel was easier and we soon hit the Gulf heading south. At 38 miles out, we hit a good grass line and decide to pull some baits. Almost immediately, we get a small king to the boat, then drop them again and get smacked down almost immediately for the second time. This one was smaller, so I cut him loose and decide to go on to the snapper grounds since I don't like kings. (Other than the SKA, they are useless in my book). We get there and I had a small bonito I had frozen from the trip we had on Wednesday and he thawed on the way out. After yesterday, I may go into the "bonito bait" business, cause they loved it! We made quick work of our 8 snapper, and once again, I didn't get to catch a fish! All I did was bait lines, unhook fish, and hold the boat in place. All snapper were good ones that we kept, but did have some pesky little ones after we started catching them since they came up to the boat and would hit the bait before we dropped down. We were in 90' of water, but the fish were holding at about 40'.
Once that was finished we ate sandwiches, then went looking for Cobia. First cassion I got to was looking good, dropped a H&H curly tail w/ a pink jig head and it was immediately swallowed, after a short trip slowing him down, we see it is another king. Get him off, pull up again and this time my yougest boy Connor hit a nice Cobia with a jig, which is his first on solo jig fishing. Second stop, and nothing! As I was getting ready to head for a third spot, I see something about 15' down, but wasn't sure if it was Cobia or shark. I cast my bucktail jig rigged on a Calcutta 700 about 40 yards in front of where they are heading and it was immediately inhaled by the bigger of the two ling. This is the only fish of the day I would catch, and after seeing the second one is questionable for meeting the minimum length, we decided not to feed him a jig also. I wore this one down and we gaffed him to the box.
Since it was Sunday, I decided to start heading in and check the grass lines again for some dolphin. The seas laid down to almost flat calm and the grass really got packed together. After 3 hookups and 2 breakoffs from kings, I decided my tackle bill was high enough for the day. I have no doubt their was some good dolphin in the area, but I don't like pulling Islanders with steel wire leaders, and everything we dropped back got cut off. We even got to witness something I have never seen before in all my years! Pulling a Islander w/ a ballyhoo at 6.5 - 7 mph, we witnessed a 40lb king come out of the water directly behind the boat and fly into the air. Now, I am not just talking about coming out of the water.....this fish went so high in the air, that we were all just looking like it was something fake. He was flying in the air, at least 15' high coming toward the back of the boat! I see the fish has my brand new Williamson purple and blue bait hanging from his mouth. He hit the water and stripped 200 yards off in a blink of the eye. Not having steel leader rigged to it, he cut through and I lost another high dollar bait! Skumm sucker!
We ended the day w/ snapper, 2 ling, some triggers, and 3 chicken dolphin that we stopped and caught on the little rods. My nephew caught his first King, so we kept that one to show his family and he said they will try to smoke some it to see how it taste.....good luck w/ that! Got back and topped off at the station to see that we ran offshore 50 miles, put 10 hours on the engine with all the trolling I did and only burned 53 gallons! I love my 4 stroke!!!!!!!!
06-06-2011, 10:07 AM
Meat Haul Trip #2
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