Since my wife and I recently had a baby and one of my main forms of entertaining work customers is fishing trips in my boat, I had some extra expense account money from my employer I needed to use before the end of the quarter. What better way to spend that money than a charter out of Venice, La with Captain Eddie Burger?
Wed started with a last minute cancellation of one of my colleague's customers and it took no time at all to fill that person's spot. Myself and two of my customers(Marvin and Brian) left Jackson, Ms the day before and started our 5 hour trip to Venice. Got to Venice around 9:30 and checked into the cabin just in time to get a quick bite and get some shut eye.
Woke up Thursday morning to a clear sky with a bright full moon. Headed down to the dock at 5:45 and met the rest of the crew Jeff and his customer Tim, Jim(JCC123) and Captain Eddie and his "boat detailer," Hoop. Iced down the boat and headed out of the marina around 6. The ride downriver was comfortable and entertaining, talking to Eddie and Hoop. We cleared South Pass about 30 minutes later and were greeted by nice swells.
Proceeded to our bait catching area and me and Hoop sabikid up a few dozen perfect sized Hardtails(Tuna Crack) in no time. Headed a little north to find a school of Tuna busting on the surface. We started throwing poppers and jigs into the school of Blackfin, Yellowfin, and the biggest Skipjacks I have ever seen. Everyone hooked up and fought a few fish and then I finally stepped up to take my first shot of the day. Having done this before and seeing the "rookies" get hook up after hook up, I figured it was going to be child's play for me as I trash talked everyone and questioned their manhood. Karma is a bit*h!!!! Cast after cast. Reeling fast and skipping the popper across the surface or slowing it down a little bit. Casting in front of the action, beyond the action, in the middle of the action. The fish refused to bite my pink popper, even though they were hitting it when other people were casting... I guess you could say I was getting "Angry". Then the ribbing kicked in and Eddie comes up and on his second cast hooks a large Skipjack and goes to hand me the rod and I take it and fight the fish to boatside all the while knowing I'm about to get ragged on even more. This was one of the jokes of the day. "Hey Gordon, do you want me to hook you up a fish so you can fight it?" Yeah, it was funny, for them.
We encounted school after school of Blackfin, Skipjack, and the occasional small Yellowfin busting in open water. One of the schools just SW of Elf had to be over 5 acres at one point. My guys would have been tickled just to stay on top of them and get worn out on the spinning gear but we pushed on and hoped for bigger and better things, even though by lunch time we had already caught 30 fish.
As the day wore on, we moved to where Eddie caught some nice fish during the afternoon bite the previous day. Before getting there we came across another open water school and worked them over with poppers and jigs picking up some more Blackfin. All of a sudden, I hear Holy $*it and look over the side of the boat and see a 25-30' Whale Shark and a flash of blue swimming under the boat. Jeff had a fish boatside that suddenly decided it didn't want to be near the boat so it took off and was soon dead weight enabling Jeff to reel in the head and gills of the fish. The suspect was a Mako. We fish a little more and I have my pink popper switched over to a clear popper and I hooked up and brought 3 fish in a row to the boat. I told those clowns that the fish were either afraid of me or didn't like pink when a man was casting it.
We pushed on to our spot and set out the live baits among schools of smaller busting YFT and soon enough, the smaller fish turned to bigger fish. The 5-10# fish that were jumping turned into 50-60# fish that were jumping around the boat. I was sitting on the gunnel next to one of the live bait rods when the clicker started screaming. I "expertly" engaged the reel and knew this fish was much better, even though I was afraid to say a word about it because of my seemingly bad luck.
Bring the fish to boatside after a short time due to my great technique
and superior equipment and Eddie gaffs a 55# YFT, right in the eye socket. Then Jim hooks up a nice one on a popper and passes the rod off to Tim. Tim is fighting his fish when another strike or two are missed on live bait thanks to Hoop's reflexes being a little slow from his age
Finally I step back to the cockpit and hook up another one and pass the rod off to someone else, while someone else hooks up another nice fish on a popper. The action here stayed like this for the rest of the day. We even had 4 fish on at the same time. We called it a day with 1 live bait left out and 1 in the livewell, finishing with 13 YFT and 10 Blackfin.
This report does no justice at all to the amount of fun that everyone had and some of the knowledge I got from Capt Eddie and Hoop. Looking forward to the THT Venice get together in a few weeks and another possible trip with Eddie at the end of the year.
I may post a few more action pics when I get them from Jim.
Venice, La 9/27
photob
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