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.