Venice La. 16-17 overnighter

[Captain Mike Ellis]

I ran a overnighter on Tuesday night with Fernando Morte and two of his friends Roberto and Jarvis from Boca Raton. Things started out real good for us. With the bait being right where i left it and allowing us to stay wih it until the well was full. Usually it sounds and you have to hit several schools before you have enough. But I am superstitous in nature so when the bait is easy I get nervous. We made the short run to the first spot of the trip. As we were approaching the rig I see a very large fish bust about a half mile from the rig. It could only be one thing the king of the gulf. We were after tuna so the last thing on my mind was catching a blue. Well that wasn't what she was thinking as I was setting the second bait out. She blasted the threadfin herring on the surface. I just saw a hole in the water and thought it was a tuna. Since the line wasn't really going out very fast. But that was quickly put to rest as she finaly felt the 6/0 Frenzy ocean camo hook in her mouth. She danced on the surface for most of the fight with several greyhounding runs and several sationary surface thrashings. After all of her tricks failed her she did the only thing she could and that was to go deep. After about forty five minutes of this the light tuna leader wore through. That was better than having her die on us.
After Frenando recuperated from the battle we got back on our quest for tuna. The next rig had fish going nuts on the surface as we approached but quickly went down for good. So it was off to a set of floaters thirty miles away they were also to slow to commit to much time. We did manage to lose four fish in a row at Mars. So now my superstious nature has taken ahold five fish in a row lost due to tackle failure. I am really under the gun so I set a course to rig another twenty six miles offshore. Being 80 miles offshore on a flat calm almost full moon night is something special. But when you pull up to a rig and the tuna are going crazy it's even better. From the get go it was blackfin after blackfin. Then the porpoises moved in. This made it hard to tell what was fish or not. So we trolled Frenzy Ballistic flyers and a pink mirrorlure around and caught one yellowfin on the flyer and to many blackfin on the mirrorlure. Then it was like you flipped a blackfin to yellowfin switch. They were everywhere but we suffered more tackle failures. There is only so much heat you can use with spinning gear and we had several put us in the rigs cables or just pull the hooks. We managed to put five in the boat before calling it a night.
And after picture perfect conditions we got caught in the nastiest thunderstorm you could imagine. I was the nasty stinging type of rain. But we made it through to sunny and dry weather on the other side of it for the 27 mile run up the river. The take for the night was seven real nice blackfin in the 15-30 pound range and five yellowfin in the 60-80 pound range. If you need a tuna fix give me a call. Also the lump season is right around the corner. that should start to fill fast