Fished in Venice Louisiana with Arlen, my brother, and our parents last weekend and had some of the most incredible fishing I have ever experienced. We fished with Capt Bill Delabar on the Anger Management, a 32twin vee. This is not going to be a detailed report because we caught so many fish it was all a blur but the first day we spent part of the morning trying to make bait, live hard tails, had trouble catching them but ended up ctching tons of albies on jigs which made great chunk baits. After making bait we headed offshore to a rig in 2200 feet and we were greeted by busting tuna. We set up our drift and immediately hooked up on top waters with some of the biggest skipjack tuna I have ever seen or heard of for that matter. It did not take long for the yellowfins to show in the chum slick and we caught one every drift while one person manned the chunk bait while the rest of us jigged and caught more black fins than I can count. It was not until the end of the day that i finally got my yellowfin on a jig, a 60 pounder. That was mission accomplished for me. I also manageda 90 pounder on a shimano twinpower 8000 which was a blast but a lot of work. Everybody got their biggest or first tuna ever. Day one was a success whith the final tally being 7 yellowfins 60-90 pounds, a monster blackfin probably 35-40 pounds that my brother caught on a jig, and more 20-30 pound mahis that I could count.
I was not sure if it could get much better for day 2 but I was ready to see. The plan for this day was to start off trying to catch livebait and then fishing some of the inshore rigs for snapper. Had a little trouble catching bait but managed a few dozen live grass shad. After catching bait we headed to the first rig and managed a a few snapper including an 18 pounder on a jig. Things slowed down there so we moved to another rig for a little more snapper fishing and then in was off to the tuna grounds again. We caught another big snapper here and donated about 12 or 13 jigs to this rig and boated a few 40 pound ajs. That stop was painful but oh well, we were having fun. When we finally got to the tuna grounds things did not look too promising. No busting tuna and no mahis. We put baits out anyways and it was not long before a couple of 60-80 pound class tuna piled on our live baits, putting on quite the aerial show. It went like this for a while constantly hooking up and pulling a few hooks and missing a few bites. We boated two 90-100 pound class tuna here, the biggest being caught on a spheros 12000. I don't recommend tuna fishing with a spheros since it froze up when the tuna was 60 feet below the boat and it had to be handlined the rest of the way. it was quite entertaining but regardless we landed the tuna. We lost a couple more hundred pound class tuna one on a jig that my brother fought for 20 minutes and the other on a live bait, both due to pulled hooks. That was too bad but there were more fissh to be caught. Once things slowed down a bit we moved to the other side or the rig and rainbow runners were showering like mullet and Bill immediately assumed marlin so we put out the big blue runner we had bridled for this very occassion. It didn't take but about 15 seconds and something picked up the bait. We came tight on him and he took to the air and after a short battle my dad landed his first blue marlin. OUr first ever and Bill's first of the year. Final tally for the day, 4 yellowfins 70-100 pounds, lots of big mahis which we released, 5 or 6 red snapper, and a blue marlin. It just does not get much better than that. It was such an awesome weekend I am already planning my return trip to fish with Bill and Bob, the mate. IT was world class fishing with a world class captain and mate. I would highly reccommend the trip to anyone and I highly reccommend fishing with Bill. He is a great guy and great captain. Still trying to round up all the pictures but I will post them when I get them.
The jigging tackle performed almost flawlessly but as much as I hate to admit it the drag on my twinpower is toast. After the first day of fishing and the at big tuna I caught on it I decided I would take it apart and see how the drag faired. It was not good. I opened the reel up to find lots of graphite shards and dust and drag washers the were melted together. Despite that everything else performed awesome. I landed that 60 pounder on my stella in about 3 or 4 minutes. He didn't stand a chance!
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