Had a long and frustrating day yesterday…..
First let me say that summer is here! The blue water was about 18 miles out of south pass and there are thousands of summer tuna making their arrival. It was really awesome to see big schools of flying fish and tuna busting them along with schools of small bait clinging to the man-o-wars.
It was so nice when we left the pass that I decided to go long and check out the floaters. On the very first stop we saw tuna busting and jumping like there was no tomorrow. I put the baits back and pulled for about an hour with no takers so we changed gears and dropped jigs. Again no takers and we couldn't really get where we needed to be because the drill ship kept blowing its horn and yelling at us over a megaphone.." You are violating our security zone!". I guess they are now profiling folks from Hattiesburg. I will admit that my crew looked scary but Deliverance scary not 9-11 scary. ( just kidding guys!) Anyway, I got fed up with that and decided to go check out some other spots. Next stop pulled up to the same scenario and threw a popper right into them. WHAM! A nice 40lb yellowfin inhaled it…..then spit it out. Ten minutes later another nice fish ate the popper and again somehow spit it out. How they can toss two sets of treble hooks like that I have no idea. Third one to eat the popper took it deep and it was game on. Ronnie was on the pole and he made short work of a 40lb yellowfin. A couple more swing and misses and I decided it was time to catch some live bait. It didn't take long till we had 5 baits but they were big for the fish we were seeing. I put them back anyway but no takers. After a while we decided to pull Mirrolures and Bombers again. Three hours later and 3 more small yellowfin released we decided to make one more move. Again the fish were busting and jumping but this time they were bigger- a lot bigger. Ronnie launched the popper only to watch three fish knock it five feet out of the water several times and never get hooked! It was insane! I have never in my 15 years of full time chartering seen a popper get knocked around so much with out catching a fish! I knew these fish were big enough to eat those big baits so I set up and sent them back. It took about five minutes before we were doubled up. The first fish spit the hook almost right away but the second one was burning drag out of a 50W like it was a Zebco 202. Then he was gone. I have no idea what happened but I shook it off and put our last 2 baits out only to have them eaten by Barracuda. About the same time Ronnie threw the popper right into a dozen fish that were attacking a bait ball and they went after the popper like there was no tomorrow. They were so fired up that one ate it and the other got tangled in the line and….yep we lost him. We put another popper on and made a few more casts but at that point it was almost 5pm and we surrendered. Oh well. In fishing as in life you have to have some days like that so at least that's one tough day gone. I really enjoyed fishing with the Hambone crew as I called them and I am going to hook them up when they come back in June. I had a last minute cancellation for this Saturday, Sunday and Monday if anyone is interested in helping me get some revenge on those tuna! Give me a call. God bless, Good fish! Capt. Peace Marvel Peacekeeper Charters 504-858-TUNA (8862)