It has been nearly a month since our last trip report… The weather gods have not been smiling on the Gulf of Mexico. But things finally smoothed out and the Possession Limit managed to pull away from the dock. All six of the state records we turned in from the last trip were certified, bringing our total count up to 38.
This weeks crew consisted of Bruce Slaven, Todd Strong, Richard LaBoulliere, Mike Luchak, and “Masterbaiter” Jacob Billings. Seas were forecasted to be exceptionally nice, so we decided to make this an extremely long range trip… All the way to the Constitution Rig, about 250Nm from Galveston and 50Nm further east than Redhawk or Magnolia.
We ended up fishing three new rigs for the first time: Jolliet, Constitution, and a Floater just west of the Constitution rig. Didn’t find billfish at Jolliet, by while on the way to Constitution, we had a billfish decide to hit the Black Bart mini-1656 flathead. Turned out to be a very nice sailfish, which displayed the most lit up dorsal fin I have ever witnessed. Mike L ended up tagging and releasing his second billfish from the Possession Limit.
When we finally made it to Constitution, we picked up a couple of small blackfin but the action was pretty slow. We ended up heading over to a floater which was only a couple of miles away. When we got there, we had a problem…porpoises. They raced to get behind the boat and right into the middle of the spread, and did it over and over on every pass we made. In the end, we had to head back over to Constitution, hoping they would not follow. When dark arrived, we had nothing more to show for our trolling efforts, so it was time to try and pick up a yellowfin or two. We got three quick YFT bites and landed two. At that point we were still getting lots of bites, but they were all BFT. We kept chunking till 11pm, but no more YFT so I put the autopilot in the nav mode and headed for some deep drop spots which were on the way back. The deep bite Saturday morning was exceptional. At our first area we picked up another jumbo tilefish which pushed the 30lb mark along with a few blackbelly rosefish, grouper, and queen snapper.
We finally decided to try and different location for deep dropping, and as we were making the move, we came across a couple of acres of bonita working bait on the surface. As is usually the case, a whale shark was swimming with the tuna, feeding on the same small baitfish. You can see a video of this by clicking the picture below.
By 3PM, all the boxes were packed and it was time to begin the troll home. Seems like the amount of fishing time it takes to fill all the coolers and the time it takes to clean the fish is getting pretty close to equal.
Till next trip…