Well, after a mournful week last week following the funeral of my father-n-law on Friday, I had a "last chance" day to get my boys on some snapper. With schedules and weather, they have not made it out to the snapper grounds at all this year, and Saturday was spent moving plants and furnishings from the funeral, so Sunday was the only day I could make it happen. I was phyically and emotionally exhausted on Saturday, but those 4 boys took care of everything loading the boat like they had been doing it for years and rigging tackle. Sunday morning arrived to find my wife sick and unable to make the trip, plus thunderstorms all over the coast. I had my doubts this was going to happen. They would not have anything to do with canceling for now, so we left Crowley and headed to Gulfway in Kaplan. Once there, I looked a the radar and see most of the storms are on the beach and out 5-10 miles. I said a prayer the good Lord would let me make it out.
Loaded up and headed to Pecan Island with occasional rain and some pretty big thunderstorms around us. You could have heard a church mouse in that truck as the 4 boys were sitting and watching my every turn in an attempt to get a feeling for the weather. At one point, the 2 in the back seat say the Lord's prayer and ask "paw paw James" to watch over us to make it out there to catch some fish. Paw paw James must have heard them, because all day we had devine intervention on the "Tight Hole". We launched at Rollover and hit the gulf to an easy 1' chop, rolled south about 45 miles and never got crushed by the thunderstorms. We had them to the east and to the west, but it was like someone was steering them for us. We arrived to one of my spots that had been hold big snapper to find nothing but 16-18" snapper on cut bait. This is not acceptable w/ a 2 fish limit, so I made a move about 5 miles.
About 10:30 my youngest son and my oldest step son are drifting jigs at a spot where we usually hit a couple of cobia. To my surprise, they both get bent over double and after some long fights two double digit snapper hit the floor. We ended up almost filling up a 150qt Coleman cooler w/ 10 snapper. This was by far the best cooler of snapper I have ever been a part of. I have caught a few in the 30lb range in the past out by Ship Shoal areas, but as far as quality box, this was the winner of all my years on the water. Ever fish was a drag puller and every time they hooked up, it was screams of excitment and screams of terror thinking they were going over board. It was some incredible snapper, w/ two going 29" & 30" which both tipped a digital scale at 18 & 19lbs. We never did get on the cobia, but had a blast with a couple of kings and some chicken dolphin.
On the way back home, I took it easy and relaxed as my 17y/o handled the captain duties for the ride back. To make the day even better, we stopped to fill up the boat in Kaplan on the way in to find we only used 36 gallons of fuel for the second weekend in a row! The boys said Paw Paw James was watching over us and I know he was looking down from heaven!
Pictures will be coming soon!
07-10-2012, 08:29 AM
36 Gallon Snapper trip
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