Offshore Venice LA

[CaptEddie]

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I ran a couple trips this weekend. The first one was supposed to be an overnighter on sat night. Looking at the forecast friday night it looked to be excellent on saturday but sunday was supposed to be 15-20 knots. Well that kinda scratches an overnighter cause you dont know what time sunday the wind would kick up.(according to the bouy it actually kicked up at 1 am)



I told the guys we could just do a long day of it and stay until we had a box full. I was running capthoops glacier bay because of my boat issue that is still getting resolved. We left out at 6 am and went to make bait which was pretty easy. First stop led to a couple of 20 poud yfs in the box. It slowed off there so we went on out to some deeper water and found barracuda heaven. Around noon we put a 45 pound yf in the box. No more bites on live bait so I started a chunk line with barracuda. 2nd drift was a big hookup as the fish took about 200 yards of line. The guys decided their best way of fishing was hold the rod for 5 minutes and then let someone else hold the rod. I guess they wanted to share the pain and it went on for about an hour and a half. We got color an hour and 15 minutes into the fight and it was a very nice fish. I would guess it to be at least 130 or so. We had the fish in death circles when the hook just pulled about 40 feet down. A lot of silence then but nothing we could do about it so we headed back to our rig.



I took out one of the 20 pounders to cut up and the guys looked at me like I was crazy. I told them to trust me as we needed some more chum. It paid off in a big way as we got in a consistent chunk bite from about 4-7 pm. Right at dark we ran out of chum with 8 yf in the box. We only needed one more to top it off so out went the live baits again and we picked up number 9 for the ride home. The fish were caught on 60 frenzy flouro and 7/0 circle hooks.



On mon night I was scheduled for another overnighter. It was rough when we hit the pass so we stayed around some of the closer spots. First spot we hit both baits were skyrocketed by yf which I took as a good sign. We got one about 40 pounds and put the baits back out again and waited and waited and waited. Hmm we have a problem here. I moved to a nearby rig and found nothing so I headed back to the first rig and had a yf take the livie on the way out. Got him in and then put the baits out again and nothing. What the heck. They only eat the first bait out. Waited till dark to see what was going to happen. Caught a few blackfin but pretty slow. I set a course for a 26 mile move. Told the guys to grab some sleep oin the bean bags and slowly ran over to the other rig. The bf bite was slow here till about 4 am when they started biting well on jigs. WE caught them well until daylight when we picked up a yf on a jig. Taking this as a sign I put the livies out and we started picking away at 20 pounders on live bait. The guys added a couple on poppers and we headed home around 730 am with 9 yf in the box.