 Fourchon, LA 7-23-05
A little late, but wanted to share a few pictures of our fishing trip last weekend, Saturday July 23rd.
We found gentle 1' rollers and no wind at our arrival to Belle Pass, Fourchon. We caught live croakers for bait and headed out to South Timbalier 63 for our try at mangrove and red snapper. About 12-15 miles offshore we hit a water change from clear green to gin clear "bluewater". This is only the third time in the last 11 years that we have found "bluewater" in so close, but this was by far the prettiest it has every been. We tried one platform in TS63 and the rig was loaded with mangroves. We had a swarm of 40-50 fish 10 feet under the boat the whole time. They would not take "chum", but went nuts for the live croakers. My dad and brother struggled and put two fish in the boat. I had it down to a science and scored 10-12 of them all going 5-9#'s. After we ran out of croakers in an hour we decided to head south and try for red snapper and amberjack. We stopped in ST 130 and caught some beautiful white trout. After 2 or 3 each we were tired of winching those suckers up from 178'! We decided to go in search of chicken dolphin and lemonfish. We have always dreamed of catching chicken dolphin but never have. We tried a mooring buoy in ST 130, but only caught hardtails. So we traveled back to ST 63 with a sharp eye looking for grass patches are anything floating. We saw two very large turtles on the way. Easily 3-4 feet wide. We made it to ST 63 and decided to start heading in as the heat was starting to get bad. About 4 miles north of ST 63 we saw a lone 5' long 2x4 floating in the water. When we got about 100' away we starting seeing the dolphin. There was a school of 30-40 under that one 2x4! First cast with a shad rig yielded a double by my brother. Remembering what I always heard I advised him to leave his in the water. My next cast yielded a double, then my dad was hooked up and from then on We caught them until we had our fun. We only kept 11 of them because we were not sure how good they were to eat. We caught and released quite a few. After high fiving and getting everything situated we road the last 12 miles in with huge smiles on our faces that we finally put some dolphin in the "SharkBait"! We were back at the dock with the boat on the trailer about 1:30-2pm. It was a great trip spent with my brother and dad. Unfortunately I was too busy catching the mangroves to take any pictures of them, but I did snap a couple of pictures of the dolphin. My younger brother is in a couple of the pictures. Notice the tattoo on his right bicep. Yep that's real.
On another note my dad and younger brother fished the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo for mangroves this weekend. My dad took second place with a 11 pound 11 ounce beauty! Congrats dad......... even though I had to work!
Sorry it's so long, but I was pumped up about the trip!
Gary
ps.....fried dolphin is awesome! May keep a few more next time!!!! | 
**(2) Dolphin ARE some of the best eating fish in the ocean.
photob
ucket.com 
