Great Venice Tuna Fishing

[captwells]

As I headed to Venice this past weekend I realized I had forgotten my camera on my desk I figured it would be good luck and boy was I right. The fishing out of Venice has been out of this world this past week! Huge tunas with several over 200 pounds have hit the dock as well as several very large Mako sharks.

This past Friday I had the Mike Beloath group from Georgia and they were looking for something to pull on their line. After trolling for wahoo without much luck for most of the day we switched gears to tuna and that was definitely the right decision. The yellowfin were thick and hungry! Five baits in the water and five yellowfin later they were crying uncle so we headed in with smiles on everyones face.

Gotta love catching every fish you hook, the next day we were not so lucky. Saturday I had Ted Shneider his kids and a black cloud. I think we actually invented new ways to loose fish. Thankfully the tunas were in a frenzy and kept giving us chances to redeem ourselves. We started the day with a Mako around 400-500 pounds and unfortunately the Dacron in my wind on leader broke with the fish boatside, damn the luck.

It’s hard to get a feeling as to how big the shark is in the picture but let me tell you that was one FAT fish. After playing with the shark we jigged up some jacks and then went back to tuna fishing and it was non-stop after that. I think we ended up going 3-10 on yellowfin which was painfully frustrating but I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes. Several of those lost fish were courtesy of some large sharks that just wouldn’t leave our fish alone. We hooked some truly large fish I’d guess to have been in the 170-180 pound class but the largest we got to the boat was 132. At times you could see several 120-150 pound fish in the slick at a time. At one point I looked around and just about all of the 20 boats around me were fighting large tunas.


As you can see the fishing is as good as it gets and due to some last minute cancellations we have some boats open this coming week with a forecast of 5-10 knot winds so come get in on the action.
Capt. Billy Wells
Mexican Gulf Fishing Company

[Captain Juan]

Great action, great report skipper!

You Venice guys always make us jealous with them yellers.

Cheers.

Juan

[FinalPoint]

Wow. Awesome trips! You should do a mako drift at the end of your trip.

[ironhead]

Hey Capt. you look a bit upside down in one of those pics.
You flip flopper, nice fish!

[TTesterman]

the pics are good (even the ones that make ya get inverted to see!) funny how a tuna and a Mako really don't care 'how' they land...keep up the good work ...

[fishxtreme]

Bravo Skipper, nice pics