Graduation trip Venice

[capt hoop]

Proud father Danny gave his son an offshore trip for graduation. He booked it through Venice Offshore. His son got a football scholarship to the Air Force academy. He plays either guard or center.

The problem was the seas were rough. I had been very sick the day before and wanted to cancel but they were here and I sucked it up, got out of bed and went for it. I had no intention of running far. My Glacier Bay handled the seas well but it was a slow crawl out to the targeted rig. I knew we had blackfin and amberjack at the rig. When we pulled up another boat was there and the tuna bite was slow. I marked fish all over the place. I decided to drop an Anteater jig down near the rig. Dropped down, 2 or 3 jigs, and hooked up. Backed the boat away from the rig and the fight was on.



This was easy!



A nice 50 pound class amberjack was a great way to start.



You know after a start as easy as that the rest of the day is going to be super easy or a tough game all day. I spent the next half hour or so donating jigs to the rig. These fish were bigger than usual and holding tight to the rig. I gave up donating jigs to the Amberjack Lip Piercing program.

My quest for tuna was not going well. We now had 4 boats around us chunking for tuna. The fish were there but not feeding as we would have liked. They may have been line shy or something else. Occasionally somebody would hook up to a blackfin tuna but I was not having luck setting up a comfortable drift.

I made a move close by and decided to drop down near the rig to see if I could find our limit amberjack. Almost a repeat of our first stop of the day. As I was backing from the rig I took a wave over the back or the boat. We all got soaked. It even soaked me at the console and filled the boat with water. Self bailing scuppers worked well but most of our bait on the cutting board went overboard. We all got soaked. Did I mention it was rough?



Fish put a "whuppin" on this big boy!



Another good fish and we have our limit of Amberjacks.

P4030713.jpg Photo by capthoop | Photobucket

P4030713.jpg Photo by capthoop | Photobucket

There were blackfin here but one of my buddies at the rig I just left called and said the bite may be picking up there. I went back and once again set up a chunking drift. After over an hour of this I was thinking about doing something else. Suddenly one of the lines starts screaming and the normal reaction from somebody that has never done this before is start reeling. Forgot one thing. Engage the reel. OOPS! Situation under control and the fight is on. We soon have a nice blackfin in the boat.



This bought us more time here but the lock jaw was not loosening up at all. Several drifts later the sharks moved in and shut everything down. I made an attempt to move to another rig but the side seas were splashing water into the boat so I changed direction and rode with a comfortable sea. We finished our last hour in shallow water catching and releasing red snapper almost on every drop.





We were attempting to get through to some white trout and lane or mangrove snapper or even some croaker but the red snapper were very thick. Once out of bait we went in. We did manage one nice 3 pound white trout though.

Only had 3 fish and the white trout in the box at the end of the day but the customers were happy at how the day went under the conditions we had.



Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.

CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM