Scott, John and Jacob Billings, Mike Luchak and I did a 5 day, long range trip to fish the spar rigs off the Louisiana Coast. Weren’t able to leave the dock until about 10:30pm and the seas were 2-3′ going out. Fished Toms Hump first thing on Thursday morning and boated 12 sow snapper within 30 minutes.
Trolled the rest of the day heading east and picked up only one 30″ dolphin. Seas were less than 2′ with no whitecaps. Made it to Constitution Spar about 8am Friday. From there went to Tahiti Spar, Heidelberg Spar, and the West Auriga drillship. Saw a few yellowfin tuna jumping along with a Byrnes Whale at Tahiti Spar, and there were two other boats trolling there as well. At the drillship we caught a lot of blackfin tuna and a 20lb Skipjack Tuna. Started chunking there at dark, then Mad Dog Spar and finally Holstein Spar. Not a single hit at any of them. Talking with other boats in the area it appeared that YFT were simply nowhere around.
About midnight we started back to the rocks just west of the Enchilada and Salsa Rigs. Spotted a small weedline which we trolled for 3 miles with no hits. Arrived at the rocks about noon and by 3pm had a nice box of Yellowfin Grouper, Snowy Grouper , Warsaw grouper, and queen snapper along with about 6 large Barrelfish. One of the barrelfish will end up beating Scotts state record caught just a few weeks before.
Started back to Galveston about 3:30 and arrived about 10am on Sunday morning. Seas were 3-4′, winds about 15kts, all coming from the South making for a rocky ride. Big storms between us and home on Saturday night, but they had all dissipated by the time we reached them. Our total fuel burn was just under 400gal, and we traveled 658 miles. This was a long trip so the crew was rewarded with extra rations of frozen margaritas when we got back in the slip.
Mike L put together a nice video of the trip…
This ended up being the last trip for the 2018 season because the weather gods wouldn’t cooperate any further. So, till next season…
Capt. Stout