 Fourchon Labor Day report
Went out of Fourchon on Labor day with another group in two boats. We started at ST 63 in approximately 95 feet of water. Slow there after hitting several rigs so we went further south. A few miles short of ST 130, we decided on a whim to stop at a small satellite rig and caught our limit of red snapper (18-24 inches) in less than an hour, along with two lane snapper.
We went on to ST 130 (160 feet or so) and pulled up to the main platform. Saw a bay boat out there! It was calm so it wasn't too bad. More snapper here. We should have stopped there first because the snapper were mostly bigger there. Saw our buddy boat hook into a very nice snapper (10-15 lbs) and a good sized cobia (25-30 lbs). They had gotten to ST130 before us and had there limits in short time. After catching and releasing several decent sized red snapper, we decided to run southeast to 200 feet.
At 200 feet, the water was very blue and clear. As we had already caught our limits of snapper, I decided to have fun with some butterfly jigging. At one particular rig, I hooked into an undersized amberjack. That was a blast to catch on a trevala rod. We were getting occasional shots of sand from some sandblasting on this rig so we decided to leave this rig, despite plenty of big fish showing up on the fish finder.
At the next rig, I was getting immediate hookups on the butterfly jigs but lost several jigs to nice sized fish because of slipped knots and/or cutoffs. I was able to hook into a nice 20 inch scamp grouper, though. Can't wait to come back to this same rig next trip out. I'm planning on getting some tyger leader to cut down on the cutoffs. I hope that the jig will still have the same kind of action.
As an aside, butterfly jigging is VERY fun but VERY expensive if you're fishing rigs. I'm not sure I'm totally convinced of its superiority to just plain dead bait. I lost 4 or 5 jigs on this trip to snags and cutoffs. That's at least $75 worth of jigs! I could have bought enough pogies for several trips for that kind of money. If the tyger wire works and I only lose 1 or 2 per trip, I may stick with it. By the way, I found that the cheap jigs ($7-$9) work just as well as Shimano's ($15-$20). I can live with losing two cheap jigs per trip for the fun that it provides.
Anyway, it was a great trip. I was hoping to sight cast to some cobia but we didn't see a single one.
Gmack, did you go out this past weekend? | 
