Blue Water......FINALLY!!!

Now that I can actually post pictures I will let everyone see this. It's been a long time since I have seen the blue water. However, a couple of weeks ago, we found it about 80 miles offshore, and in about 350 feet of water. I and 5 other guys headed out with a guide from College Station. He has a 32 foot Parker center console, and he knows how to find the fish. Saturday before last when I went with Steve, Chris, Woody, and Jim, we went 30 miles out and found a few fish. This guy, Robert, went out the same day only 8 miles and boated over 70 fish including a limit of snapper, grouper, kings, cobia, and others.

Anyway, we pulled up to a spot and tried for amberjack.
Nothing on the first two drifts so we decided to move to a rig. There were fish everywhere, but for some reason they just weren’t hungry. After a couple of bites and no hook-ups, we gave up on the amberjack. We headed to another spot and began catching one fish after another. Mostly vermilion snappers. We also caught some VERY nice gray snapper of about 8 pounds each. While loading the boat with meat, we let out a couple of free-lines which were periodically getting inhaled by kingfish. On one of our drifts, a dusky shark of about 11 feet decided to check us out. I, being the only one who cared anything about landing a shark of that size, grabbed the free-line rod and got the hook-up. I’m not sure how many of you have tried fighting a 500 lb+ fish on 30 lb line with a 18 inch steel leader, but there is this ominous feeling hanging over your head. You are having a blast listening to the drag, but you know deep down that inevitably there will be that gut-wrenching SNAP followed by slack line. Oh well, it was fun. Shortly after, a 9 foot bull shark came to check us out. We just finger-banged it and went on about our business.

On the way back in, the captain put us over a rock that couldn’t have been much bigger than a pickup truck. After about 30 minutes, we had our fill of 20 inch snappers and we were off to the dock.
All in all, it was a glorious trip. Final Tally:

12 Red Snapper
10 Gray Snapper
24 Vermilion Snapper
3 Triggerfish
1 Porgy
6 King fish
1 Ling
And untold hundreds of throw-backs of various sorts.

Stay tuned for my posting of my recent trip to Belize as well.

I caught this vermilion rock fish on Saturday. It was not a big specimen but he was dinner for two. I seasoned it will dill and lemon and cooked it whole on the smoker. I also flavored it with a chunk of almond wood. I was very pleased with the results.





I used my GPS to hit a spot on my fishing map. It was called a hump but I didn't notice and structure from 60' up in the water column. I changed my lure to a 3oz bucktail jig so that I could hit bottom. I caught the fish on the second drop but nothing more. I fished for about 45 minutes and then made the 2 mile paddle back to the beach where Michelle was hanging out.

Reel Satisfaction was Real Satisfying

June 14th, 2008 It isn't often that you lay in bed hoping for the alarm to go off. But when it is programmed to call reveille at 4:00am you know something big is in the air.

Jim and I waited on my front porch and I felt my spirits rise when the big dodge pick-up pulled to a stop in front of the house. Woody Chris and Alan jumped out, we “Howdy-ed” and shook hands then we packed into the truck and headed south, headed back to my house because I had forgotten my wallet then headed south again 20 minutes later.

We arrived at the dock embarrassingly late and loaded the cases of beer onto the 25ft Contender. I asked Capt. Chris Farley what to expect, hoping to be told of Huge Snapper, Long Kingfish, and Drag Pulling Amber Jacks, and he said it was ROUGH out there.

Capt. Chris had three large bean bag chairs that completely mitigated the roughness of the ride and one person could ride in the center console on the foot pad making it a comfortable ride for four fishermen. Even so, the rough seas meant that that ride was a bit slow and meant that running far enough offshore to find amberjacks was out of the question. We took turns being the odd man out and getting the full effect of the 4 to 6 ft seas on the way out to the fishing. It was rough enough that twice the capt. asked if we wanted to keep going out. Obviously, we did not ask to head back to the dock, you don't get a crew like this together often enough turn around before even a single line gets wet. I for one was smiling broadly on the run out, it was great to feel the great outdoors and to be there with great friends. As we rode out we surveyed the fishing gear and were happy to see many of the same reels that we have in our personal collections. After about 2 hours of battering by the Gulf of Mexico we throttled down in the proximity of a rig approx. 30 miles offshore.

We first endeavored to pull some red snapper up from the bottom. We fished "Snapper Jigs". A heavy lead head with a buck tail and standard hook, and a stinger hook attached to the hook with an inch and a half of wire leader. Each Jig was baited with Sardines, double hooking them, once through the eye and once in the body between the dorsal fin and tail.
We fished the bottom third of the 80ft water depth, the fishing was slow but the Snappers landed were good sized. We had several Snappers in the boat when I hooked up with domething that ran out, away from the boat rather than down. After a nice fight I brought a 38 inch Cobia to the side of the boat where the Captain put the Gaff to it and hauled the thrashing sea creature up onto the deck of the boat. After getting the Cobia onto the ice and sharing a slimy, bloody handshake we got back to the Snapper and it didn't take long for Woody to hook up with something that was clearly of a heavier class by the way it bent the rod over. When it was finally in the boat we all remarked that while we had seen pictures of such Snapper (15+ pounds) it was the largest any of us had ever seen in person, head and tail longer than the other legal Snappers.

Fishing at this site slowed but we managed a few more Snapper before moving to a honey hole a few miles away. Fishing over this wreck was fun, we dropped the Snapper rigs at the captains' signal and everyone immediately hooked up. The fish here were smaller, typically on the edge of the 16 inch limit, but in two passes we had filled the 10 Snapper limit for the boat and began bump trolling jigs with either Sardines or Ribbon Fish for pelagic fishes. The rig was similar but it was a much lighter jig head, and the rigs for ribbon fish had two stingers to hook the long baits.

We trolled over the wreck a few times quickly putting a legal kingfish in the icebox but subsequent passes yielded no bites so we loaded up and ran again to another spot with structure. We trolled baits but saw zero action at his location and decided to head back inshore where fishing had been better earlier. We worked in, bouncing from rig to rig with little besides the fun of fishing with friends to show but a few trigger fish.

On the run between rigs Alan spotted birds over a tremendous writhing mass of bait. The action was along a rip line and we worked the area in and around the bait, We landed a couple blacktip sharks and were taunted by a boat-wise Cobia that apparently wasn’t in the mood for a late lunch of sardine or ribbon fish. We threw every type of terminal tackle in the boat at that fish as it swam around the boat to no avail. Finally we gave up and trolled away only to have a sardine hit and broke off on a line far behind the boat.

As we pushed into Texas waters the color changed to green, we pulled up in the shadow of a rig and commenced to catch one blacktip shark after another, Jim and Woody especially had a knack for hooking the ocean predators, at least a dozen sharks were brought boatside and released but the number may have been 16 or possibly 143 it was tough to keep track. There were several times were there were doubles hooked up. If there weren’t a limit of 1 shark per boat we would likely still be filleting. The shark fishing around this rig really made the trip a memorable experience. It was gratifying to hear the radio fall silent indicating that the other boats working the Gulf that afternoon had given up and knowing that we were happily fighting 4 foot sharks. I think that when we finally loaded up and headed for Freeport that everyone was very satisfied.

Capt. Chris urged us to come again when the water conditions promised to be more condusive to kingfish and amberjack and I intend to take him up on the offer because Capt. Chris obviously has a customer first attitude. Capt. Chris Farley did everything I hope and expect a fishing guide to do: He ran the boat quick so we could spend more time fishing than boating without beating us to death. He managed the drifts well and kept us on fish whenever there were fish, he was willing to fish the way we wanted to when we saw the birds and bait, he ran the gaff well, was pleasant to chat with, and it obviously bothered him when the fishing was slow.

Success at last

After a long dry spell I finally got to see some blood spilled from a critter. Last week we had a safety gathering here at Anadarko. Most of our safety people came in from all over the US in addition to a couple of people from our international offices. On Friday, I took John Geng and Jeff Ostmeyer to Blanton’s place for an evening of shooting and pig hunting. John, being from China, is not allowed to own any kind of gun, so we thought it would be a good idea to let him shoot lots of different guns. The arsenal looked somewhat like this:

5 -- .22 LR rifles
3 -- .22 Magnum Rifles
1 – 6 mm Remington
1 – 300 Magnum
1 – AK-47
1 – AK-74
1 – Mini 14
2 -- .22LR pistols
1 – 380 pistol
1 -- 9mm pistol
1 – 45 pistol
2 – 12 ga. Shotguns

There were others as well.

Anyway, I gave john my hat to wear and we gave him a few lessons. He did very well for a beginner. I’m not sure how many rounds were fired, but there were plenty.

As it started to get late, we headed to the stands to wait on some pigs to come to the feeders. John had proven himself worthy with the 6 mm as you can see in the picture. We saw 3 deer and a couple of coons, nothing for me to get really excited about, but John was having the time of his life. Unfortunately, no pigs came to our feeder, so we headed to pick up Jeff right after dark. His weapon of choice was the AK-74 with illuminated reticles and a laser sight. It worked well. When we picked him up, there were two dead pigs laying out in the field that had become that way after the shooting light had left. We loaded them up and took them to the gutting place. After we took the insides out, we hung them up and took the outsides off.

I gave all the meet to Jeff, and he met me at the office this morning with a few packages of sausage. All in all, it was a great time. John will be able to tell all his friends what Texas is really like.

Shittiest Charter Ever

Here is a report from the shittiest charter trip that I have ever been on. This trip wasn't even worthy of a photograph although I was so happy to see the dock again that I almost took a picture of it.

Michelle wanted to go fishing so I thought I would book us a trip on a party boat for the June 1st opening of rockfish season in the North Central zone (bay area). I checked the buoys on saturday night before going to bed and was pleased to see the waves were only 4'. I checked the buoys again at 5am on sunday morning to find 8' swells at 8 seconds. Shit. We also had 20-25kt wind to go with the overcast and cold (low 50's) forecast. Apparently it takes more than this to cancel the charter boats.

Michelle and I wore blue jeans because I told her that there was no way we could get wet on a 40' boat. As soon as we cleared the leeward side of pillar point we experienced the full swell. The boat rolled so hard that water shot through the drains on the port side and soaked my left leg. Then we rolled hard to the starboard side and soaked my right leg. Shit. This went on periodically for the next hour until we got to the fishing grounds. That was about the time that I realized that I not only wasn't dressed appropriately but also I didn't have enough layers on. It was going to be a cold day.

We drift fished in 90-120' of water. The boat was broadside to the wind and swell so it was rolling hard about every 8 seconds or so. The fishing also sucked. It was very slow and most of the fish that came up were quite small. I tried throwing a couple of them back but apparently it is a one way trip from 100'. Every rockfish is a keeper no matter the size unless it is a protected canary rock fish - those are released dead (california law). The fishing was so slow that we stayed out the whole day. There were a lot of unhappy people on board. I would say that of the 25 people on board only about 5 people fished the whole time. I took some satisfaction from outfishing charlie for the first time ever. I was the boat people on this trip.

Being that it was a party boat there were also some annoying characters on board. There was a guy who showed up piss drunk. He passed out during the trip out there but his a-hole friends woke him up when it was time to fish. Of course he was on the railing to my left. After he crashed into me a few times I grabbed him by the coat and told him to get away from me. He got belligerent so his friends dragged him away. Luckily he was passed out for more of the trip than he was awake.

Michelle hung in there for a while but after a few hours she joined the non-fishing crowd. For someone who is prone to motion sickness she did really well considering the conditions. Back on the dock I asked the captain what he thought of the day and he said it was a 8.5 - 9 on the shitty scale (10 being perfect shittiness).