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  #1  
Old 08-08-2012, 01:38 AM
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deepsouthcharters deepsouthcharters is offline
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Default 2 day report from a customer! Great report

Here is the report from Nate's blog, this is the same customer that made the video! Its a long report but its awesome! I think you will enjoy the report.

Venice Louisiana Offshore Tuna Fishing!

We left Morton at 3 am on Saturday morning with 12 guys, 8 coolers, a change or two of clothes, and high hopes of catching some big fish down in Venice. This was the first time ocean fishing for most of the guys, so that made it even more exciting yet. Offshore fishing is my alltime favorite outdoor activity so I got a few miles under my belt out in the blue water!
We arrived down at the Yellow Cotton Bay Cabins at about 5:00 pm Saturday evening, dropped off our clothes and headed down to the Marina to see what all the boats caught that day. They were pouring in from offshore with nice catches of Tuna, Mahi Mahi, Wahoo, Snapper, and Grouper. We were excited!!!

The Venice Marina has a nice little restaurant so we gobbled down a bunch of seafood before heading back the 6 miles to our cabins at Yellow Cotton Bay. The highlight of the meal was for sure the world famous seafood baked potato. It is stuffed with shrimp and smothered in a chowder like seafood bisque:

So up at 3:30 am Sunday morning Dave O and I made bacon and eggs for everyone to gobble down at 4 am. We were at the dock at 4:40 am, loaded the 2 boats and headed out for a deep sea fishing adventure with captain Josh and the crew at Deep South Charters. One of our boats went 70 miles offshore one way, and my boat went about 50 miles offshore the other way.
We stopped at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and cast netted up a bunch of pogies for bait for the day and then we were off. The seas were calm and we were running 45 miles per hour so it took us just over an hour from the Mississippi to get to our first spot.
Nothing was happening at our first spot so we headed out another 10 miles to another spot and quickly hooked into this nice yellowfin tuna. Dave O battled this fish for about 10 minutes and was about ready to hand off the rod out of exhaustion when I said no way. So I got in a good position to leverage the rod for him and it wasnt 5 minutes later he brought this beast boat side for the crew to gaff! We were pumped!!!

About 20 minutes later and we hook a "big one" on a free lined live pogie. Chris and Jason battle this fish together for probably close to 25 minutes and when we get it close to the boat the crew starts freaking out that it isnt a yellowfin, but rather a monster wahoo!! Thats when everyone started to get real nervous cause wahoo have the sharpest teeth in the ocean and we were using a 60 lb fluorocarbon leader. Typically you need steel for any hope of landing a large wahoo and even then I have seen fish bite through the steel leaders.

Well, We landed that monster wahoo and we were more than excited!!
The next couple hours we missed a mahi mahi that hit a topwater popper I was casting off the front, but thats about it. We didnt so much as get another bite till for several hours. Then we decided to change up tactics and head for a big weedline that we saw on the way out. We pulled up to the weedline and started trolling some big plugs and ballyhoo and were just about to give up on that technique when we hit the motherload of a fishing spot.
This big bull mahi mahi came out from the weedline and slammed our surface bait. Todd battled the fish for about 10 minutes and we got very lucky that it didnt throw the hook as it leaped several times all the way out of the water! By far the biggest mahi mahi we have ever caught:

There were a couple other boats in the vicinity already catching mahi mahi along this weedline and they were reporting lots of marlin in the area too. Well it didnt take us long to spot massive marlin busting schools of bait just 50 yards from the boat! Awesome! The captain and mate wanted really bad to try and catch one of these beasts, but none of us were really too excited about a 3 hour battle with one of those beasts. 20 minute battles with normal sized big fish was about all we could handle.
Then out of nowhere a school of massive tunas showed up on this weedline and it was game on. The other boats were hooking up with 60-80 lb yellowfins when my live bait got hammered. I immediately handed off the rod to one of the guys to reel in and after 15 minutes the rod went to the next guy, the next guy, the next guy and the next guy until all the guys on the boat were completely worn out.

Then I battled that fish for the next one hour and seven minutes and finally after a battle of just over 2 hrs we landed this monster yellowfin tuna!
Got the fish in, mustered up enough strength for a pic and headed the 1.5 hrs back in to the marina. We got back in just a hair before 6 pm. We only caught 4 keeper fish all day, but they were all 4 fish of lifetime!! Since we were planning on fishing 2 days we decided to go for big fish the first day and lots of fish the second day. Definitely I recommend offshore fishing 2 days to give you a chance at big fish, but also a back up plan for reeling in lots of fish.
When 3 out 4 fish are just about 6 feet long, and the fourth is over 4' thats a pretty good tub of meat at the end of the day.

Out of Venice we fish 6 out of a boat so this was just the account of my boats fishing adventure. Justin's boat didnt make it back to the dock till about 7 pm so we waited anxiously to hear about their first day of adventure...
Ok so first day of offshore fishing definitely goes to my boat for quality of fish, but numbers definitely goes to Justin, Chad, and Jareds boat. Oh yeah, my boat was basically the old men, their boat was the young bucks.
They took an 80 mile gamble on finding some tunas schooled up way offshore and struck out. So then on their way back in they hit up some oil rigs and loaded up on a limit of amazing red snapper, a bunch of monster mangroves, and some great eating grouper!

Ok so I have caught alot of mangrove snapper in my day and I absolutely love fishing for them and eating them. Typically a good mangrove for me is in the 3-4 lb range, but this monster mangrove Jared caught is a world class trophy! Just for grins I looked up the Louisiana state record - 14.36 lbs.
I didnt get a weight or length on Jareds fish, and I think Mark just ate if for dinner, but oh well. Awesome fish! I was blown away with how many big mangroves they caught! Usually a 3-4 lber is a good one for me!!
I think quite a few state records end up with the same fate....
We got back to our cabins about 8:30 pm on Sunday night and cooked very fresh mahi mahi, wahoo, and of course TUNA!
While that was cooking we were frantically vacuum sealing the rest of our bounty! We filled up several very large coolers with some of the best meat in the ocean and then hit the sack extremely exhausted. We prepared and brought down a small UHAUL covered trailer to bring all our meat home. (wishful thinking eh?)

4 am came around quick and it was back to the Marina for our second consecutive day of Offshore fishing. Me and the old guys decided we wanted to focus on catching more manageable bottom fish- snappers, groupers, cobia, etc. I have done this kind of fishing quite a bit so we didnt need a mate for this trip with Captain Mike. I ran the boat up onto the schools of pogies, near the oil rigs for anchoring, and did all the work for the old guys cutting bait, retying leaders, taking off fish, etc (I didnt get no stinkin tip at the end of the day though.....)
We loaded up with some pogies for bait and headed out to some fairly nearby oil rigs! The action was very steady and we caught our limit of big red snappers in short order.
It was fun, because while a couple guys had big rods down near the bottom for groupers, sharks, and snappers, we had the other guys flipping weightless chunks of fish up near the rigs for monster mangroves on light tackle.
We popped around to a couple different rigs and absolutely loaded up the ice box full with a plethora of awesome tasty fish!
This kind of fishing is perfect for old guys and young kids, lots of action! We had a couple giant warsaw grouper on, but two of them broke off and the third got us all wrapped up in the pipes, oh well, we will get the big one next time!! We had an absolute blast and got back to the dock early to relax and reflect!
We got back to the dock early and we waited anxiously to find out how our other boat did. They went out 80 miles in the other direction so we didnt have any communication with them, plus what added to the anticipation was that they got back in late........they were out after tunas.

That kind of fishing is way more extreme and way more risky, you can come back with nothing, or you can hit the motherload

So the other guys headed back to the cabins to shower, but I am pretty much used to sitting in stinky fish slime all day long anyhow, so I waited back at the marina for our other boat to come in. I really hoped that they would catch at least some tunas, but I was kind of discouraged at most of the boats coming in with no tunas to speak of.
That is very uncommon for Venice this time of year, but bait was hard to get and the tunas across the board were just no on for some reason....Finally I get a text that the guys are 30 minutes out, but no mention or pics of any fish caught....I am literally biting my nails hoping they caught some fish.
the boat finally came in and started plopping their fish into the cart:
So apparently they hit up a weedline and some rigs on their way in from tuna fishing. Thats a given in Venice this time of year, big deal....Then finally the guys start to talk and the phones with pictures start to come out and the cameras with video footage. Oh yeah, they overloaded the cart and filled it with yellowfin
So while they are filling the cart with awesome fish, I am watching footage on their phones and cameras of them swimming with whale sharks and looking at pics of some of the coolest fishing scenery on the planet:

Can you imagine being way out in the ocean flat calm fishing by huge ships and floating oil rigs with crystal clear water, whales and whale sharks, and tunas swimming around!! Very cool, check out this video to get a little taste of their experience:

Ok, so they absolutely hit the motherload!! By far the best haul of the day from Venice Marina, trust me I saw all the boats coming in and there was nothing close. Captain Josh with Deep South Charters got them boys out 45 minutes earlier than all the other boats, was able to get bait in short order whereas most boats struggled and he stayed out a good hour longer than the rest of the boats.
Now if you want a pretty for sure deep sea fishing trip, go bottom fishing out of Venice. If you want to take a chance at a trip of a lifetime, go tuna fishing out of Venice with Captain Josh. And if you want to spread the risk out a little bit, plan on two days of fishing to give you the best odds at steady action and the tuna trip of a lifetime.
And definitely plan ahead accordingly, because one cooler in the back of minivan just aint gonna cut it to get all the fish meat back home. We had even the uhaul maxed out with 8 coolers full of fish!
Nate
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  #2  
Old 08-08-2012, 07:04 AM
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swamp snorkler swamp snorkler is offline
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Good read, and some good action too!
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Old 08-08-2012, 09:02 AM
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Fishmaster19 Fishmaster19 is offline
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Great read/ report! Would LOVE to see some pics...Sounds like y'all had a blast!!
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  #4  
Old 08-08-2012, 12:34 PM
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deepsouthcharters deepsouthcharters is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fishmaster19 View Post
Great read/ report! Would LOVE to see some pics...Sounds like y'all had a blast!!

Just watch the video that I posted, its from this trip
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