Texas and Louisiana Report

[Boboe]

The last month out in the oilfields offered me plenty of fishing time. First, a scant 14 miles outside the Galveston jetties we came across a school of big, fat, aggro sheepshead in 45' of water on a rig while standing by. They were in swarm mode, and when you hooked one, he'd have at least a half dozen of his buddies with him, trying to eat the lure as well. When my deckhand paid attention , he had no trouble making it a double header. The sheepshead were going about 5 lbs, and were suspended about 1/3 of the way down. We caught them on white 2" GULP minnowgrubs. I'm sure that with shrimp or fiddler crabs they'd have been jumping into the boat. With the GULP's, we hooked up about every 10 minutes.

A few days later, on a different job, we made a supply and water run to a rig in about 350', about 60 miles SSW of Galveston. The AJ's were fired up here. I caught one that went 44" fork on my first drop with a 12 oz diamond jig. A half dozen drops later, my deck hand hooked a nice one, but it took him into the rig. After a few more tries with different jigs and no luck, I decided to catch some hardtails or bermuda chubs chubs that were holding tight to the rig near the surface. With the same GULP minnowgrubs as used for the sheepshead, we wailed on the hardtails and baby almaco jacks. The chubs didn't want to bite , but that didn't matter.

I made up a slip lead rig with a 12/0 mustad circle and a 12' leader of 80#. My hardtail got about 80' down when it got demolished. I probably gained 30' of line on him right off the bat, when he decided he didn't like the looks of the bottom of my crew boat and proceeded to dump me. Unfortunately, even a slight deviation from straight-up-and-down will get you into the rig when you're pumping water to the rig, and that jack beat me. My deck hand had already caught another bait or two by then, so I re-rigged and fired down. This time a cuda ate my bait and hook on the way down. A new hook and bait and I gave the rod to my deckhand to give it a try. He isn't a very experienced fisherman, so I had to coach him a bit. His bait got eaten at about 150' after about a minute's wait, and the jack dumped him right into the rig like a little bitch . It wasn't looking good for the home team. We were 1 and the fish 4.

I decided that the fish were going to die one way or the other, so I grabbed a skein of 130# fluoro and made a 10' leader. Not that fluoro was necessary, but it was the heaviest line I had with me. They probably would have bitten on #15 wire, as fired up as they were. So, loaded with bigger hardware, I tried fishing up on the bow of the boat, keeping further from the rig legs. No bites at all, so I reeled up and dropped down at midship again. Here, the bite was almost instant on the way down at about 100'. I beat the drag down and dragged me and my gear up to the bow. To hell with that jack. I was going to pop him or stop him. Well....I pulled him off, but he didn't get me into the rig. 1 to 5. Another bait, and another instant bite at midship, followed by a tug-of-war while trying to get to the bow. Once vertical on the fish, I backed the drag off. He was a solid fish--just like all the others we'd hooked--and a few minutes later he was laying on the surface. He taped at 46" fork.

It was my deckhand's turn again, since I had 2 dead, and him 0. His fish went just as my last one did, except he finished his off quicker than I did mine. He'd never caught any fish of any size before, but that day he managed to catch a 48" fork AJ. We estimated its weight at 45#. The other captain, who was standing by watching and gaffing enjoyed the show.

Over in Louisiana while working a production field in 35' of water. We noticed a ton of sheepshead holding along the legs, chewing on barnacles. We caught them on plain jigs, GULP jigs, and dead shrimp. A few spanish mackerel mixed in to cut off hooks and lures. There were sheepshead on literally every place we went to, whether it be a single pipe wellhead all by itself, or a big multi-platform jobbie. My deckhand got bites all day long. At night we tied off to the main platform in our field and caught redfish under the lights. They were there every night, on both ends of the platform, all week. We caught them on dead shrimp, Texas Trout Killers, Storm Minnows, and one on a 6oz diamond jig. Most of these redfish were schoolers, within a couple inches of each-other, and about 5#. There were some bona fide studs too, which we didn't manage to land, but had up alongside the boat. Lastly, the cobia have already started to show up. At one platform, we saw 5 turning circles around the well pipe. I managed to catch the smallest one--a barely-legal, while the pair of 40 pounders in the gang looked on with disinterest.

In summation: I brought a lot of fish home.

[Boboe]

Here are a couple of the jacks that we put on the deck.

Deck hand Micah's fish:


Micah and I with a nice pair of Texas jacks:

[Disco Lady]

COÑO!!!!!!!!!

[DIRTYFOOT2]

Nice report Bo. WTG getting Micah in on the saltwater tug of war, donkey style