This week’s trip consisted of Larry Duggan, Rick Gaido, Larry Fincher, Scott and myself. Originally a 3 day trip, the weather gods smiled on the Gulf and we changed the plan to a 4 day. Unlike the last trip, we had ice cream seas the whole time. Because snapper season was closing before we returned, we started out deep dropping at some structures south of Peanut Rock. We found quite a variety of species there including goldface tiles, blueline tiles, queen snapper, vermillion snapper, and yellowedge grouper. Scott caught a goldface tile which will end up being a new state record, and the two yellowedge were between 15-20 lbs each.
From there we hit a couple of deep drop spots to the east and picked up a couple of golden tiles before heading to a swordfish spot. We tried 3 spots without any hits, so we ended up deep dropping the rest of the time on day one.
At the end of the day, we headed west but ended up going to Gunnison first to try for some tuna. We arrived there at about 2:30am and started dropping diamond jigs for blackfin. The blackfin were plentiful, and quite large, but the Barracuda were as well. As a result, only a handful of blackfins were landed intact. We ended up with 3 larger blackfin going in the box, with one north of 20lbs. We chunked for about 2 hours for yellowfins, but the only hookups were large blackfins.
As the sun rose on day two we began trolling while on the way to some swordfishing spots near Little Sister. Came a across a beautiful rip in about 2000 feet of water which we trolled for an hour. Saw several blowups ahead of us on the weedline from what appeared to be yellowfins, but got no hits on the billfish baits. We also came across a pod of Byrnes whales blowing on the surface.
At the first sword spot, Rick got into position on the big gold Diawa. Wasn’t long before the rod tip started twitching. Rick teased the sword for about 30 taps before finally coming tight, only to have the reel malfunction and losing the fish just seconds after hooking up. We did not bring the bait up, but instead simply dropped it back into position hoping for another shot. It took about 5 minutes but finally the rod tip started dancing again. After a half dozen whacks, the sword took it again, and the rod bowed double. The drag was slipping and this one had the appearance of a pretty large fish. Unfortunately after only 30 seconds, the hook pulled and we missed shot 2. When the bait was retrieved, it surprisingly had no tears or bite marks. We dropped again but this time had no success.
We ended up moving further west and tried a couple more spots with not success. At the last spot we tried, we soaked the squid for about 30 minutes without success. It was getting close to 5pm, and we decided to go try for some tilefish before it got too late. As Rick was winching in the bait, the line suddenly started angling upward, our first indication that something had taken the squid. Within a few seconds a sword jumped clear of the water about 200′ behind the boat and we knew we were hooked up to a keeper fish. The sword ended up jumping one more time and did a few head slaps before heading back down. After 15 minutes Rick had it to the boat and his first sword slid through the transom door. The fish was 60″ to the lower jaw and 33″ girth. After a few high 5’s, the fish was dressed out , the cooler repacked, and we started looking for a few more tiles to fill in the gaps in the ice. Scott put us on an area about 800′ deep, and we caught tiles consistently right up until about an hour before dark.
Here is a slide show from the pictures we took during the trip. Be sure to enlarge to full size for the best view…
The coolers were completely packed with fish as we grilled steaks and headed northwest back to Galveston. We arrived at daylight, and enjoyed frozen margaritas for breakfast.
This was a very good trip…
Capt. Stout