TX Tuna out of Port Aransas 3/30-31/18

[esgeo]

Howdy y'all,

I recently moved from the SF Bay Area to Tulsa, OK, so in order to get my offshore fix, I set my sights on the Gulf Coast. Initially I planned a weekend trip out of Galveston, TX back in February, but poor weather led to the trip being moved and I had to cancel my spot.  I searched around and found another trip potentially going out of Port Aransas (farther south along the coast). I had mentioned to Alan I was going to try this out and he asked for a report in return. Given he has been so generous to me in so many ways, this is the least I can do in return.

Initially I signed up for this trip solo, but was able to wrangle my brother in Denver and another friend who lives in Houston to join. The boat we signed up to go on is called the Scat Cat, an aluminum hulled catamaran, that supposedly does 12-14 knots. There were 17 passengers (max 24) and a crew of two captains and four or five deckhands. Unlike SoCal, the galley situation is very informal, with an electric hot plate and a gas grill to cook with, with the expectation that people bring their own food. The trip was a 56 hour, leaving 0600 on a Friday and returning 1400 on Sunday. Suffice it to say, we overshopped the evening before, and there was a lot of communal food sharing going on.

One of the unexpected benefits of the trip was they opened the boat Thursday night, so we were able to get situated, enjoy some beers in the warm gulf air, get to meet fellow passengers and crew, and sleep on the boat before departure. Early Friday morning we woke up to settle our fares and then left the harbor and headed out into the Gulf.  About 2 hours en route, we stopped off at a reef site to do some "science" and put ten red snapper on the boat so the captain could deliver the heads. There was a bit of wind, so it took a couple of drifts to get 10 fish (although half the boat was sleeping), and they were healthy size snapper. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of them.

After the brief stop we continued on our way out to our destination, the Perdido rig in 9000', about 160 nautical  miles from the landing. There was a decent northeast wind for most of the ride out, so we made between 10-12 kts on the way out and arrived at the rig around 2100. Nobody knew how the fishing would be- there has been a lot of wind earlier in the week and we were one or two days before the full moon. As we showed up however, it looked awesome. Tuna were crashing bait in the lee side of the rig near a supply ship and there were flying fish everywhere. As soon as we got in position for our first drift, it was game on. I fished a jig on the first drift and got a blackfin, but my brother, who had never hooked a tuna larger than a skipjack got hammered by a good yellowfin that ended up working him over good before finding its freedom a few feet beyond the range of the gaffs. I switched to a popping rod fishing a halco 130 and got destroyed on the first cast. The fish unfortunately took me around the leeward corner of the boat where I got wrapped with some jig fisherman. While trying to untangle braid on braid, that fish found its freedom too. The next cast I got a smaller yellowfin, and got it to the boat quickly to at least get one over the rail.  By this time the fish were getting pretty active on the surface with some huge airborne blowups on poppers. After watching a few good fish come on the popper, I rigged up my only popper, a green/chartreuse 150mm pop orca. After a few casts I figured out how to draw the strike and soon enough had a good fish come tight.

This was when I realized the amazing thrill of hooking a big fish on a popping rod with more action than power starkly contrasts with the misery of lifting that fish to the gaff with a popping rod with more action than power! After that fish I tried flylining a small flying fish to no avail as well as a little chunk fishing. By 0200-0300 the surface bit had died. I kept fishing smaller jigs, throwing a glow flatfall that kept me plunking away at the blackfin until gray light. The bite was totally dead at dawn, and I went to lay down around 0700. The biggest fish from that night ended up going 158# after being bled and iced for 36 hours. For jigs, the 7 and 9 oz pink or chartreuse benthos speed jigs were great, but we lost a few to the cuda. I thought the flatfall did well too, but with I would have had bigger than 160g. Big poppers did great, although I lost my only popper after the deckhand unhooked it and the fish knocked it overboard. I fished a 40# setup with 80# leader for blackfin and 65# with 80# leader for yellowfin. I personally did not have any bite offs or fish mauled by barracuda.

That day we trolled around all day, circling the Perdido rig and also headed north about 8 miles to the Deepwater Pontus drillship.  There were a handful of yellowfin hooked on the troll that day as well as a few barracuda. We tried a few jigstops where we saw birds and jumpers, and one guy momentarily hooked a small marlin on a flatfall jig. In the evening we started our drifts again by a Perdido and ended up getting mostly blackfin with a few smaller grade yellowfin. Although the life was still there, the activity on Saturday night paled in comparison to Friday night. Around 0200 we started the trip back to port Aransas for a smooth ride with following seas home.

Back onshore, fish cleaning took several hours- my brother and I had booked flights on southwest we had to move to the next morning, as we didn't even get out of Port Aransas until after 2000. Our party of three had 324# of fish cleaned, 70# of which ended up in my cooler as checked baggage. Most nights of this past week were spent sealing, canning, and of course tasting, much to my dogs' and cat's happiness and wife's mild dismay.

I'll attach some other photos in the next post, as I'm pretty novice at the posting...

Cheers,

Eric

[esgeo]

More pics

[ChileRelleno]

Sounds like a freaking blast!   

[David Hall]

Nice report, sounds like an excellent trip.   

[Swami805]

Great write up, thank you,looks like y'all had a blast!

[Shark Hunter]

Awesome!

[Tightlines667]

Great report! 

Sounds like there was plenty of action.  That is the first time I have ever heard of a marlin taking a jig, must've been interesting.

John

[Benni3]

Looks like a great trip and very cool photos 

[erikpowell]

That sounds awesome! and outta Texas to boot.
Tuna and marlin hitting poppers sounds like Fiji fishing.

I wish we had some oil rigs here in 9000' for structure....Haha, just kidding 

Nice report, thanks for the tip !

[esgeo]

Glad y'all enjoyed the narrative. I didn't see the marlin, but I was told it bit the flat fall on the sink. Sounds like it immediately came up to the surface and spat the jig. That happened near the Deepwater Pontus rig in the early afternoon.

Was pretty cool to see how much life congregates around the rigs. Seems like the combination of light and current eddies really draw a lot of life. On one side of the rig there was a huge eddy filled with dinner plate size chunks of sargassum.

Definitely a cool trip to check out as long as you don't mind a bit of downtime in transit and can deal with limited privacy. Sure makes me appreciate the 1.5 days out to Cortes/Tanner or similar distances when all the travel is done at night. I think checking out Venice is next on my list (probably next winter for a midnight lump trip), so if anyone has any suggestions regarding that, I'm eager to hear them.

[day0ne]

That boat has caught several marlin trolling around. The problem with fishing Perdido is there isn't any place to bottom fish during the day. BTW, tie on a few ounces of weight and fish some bait around the rig in the day time will usually get you some rainbow runners. Good eating. We've even caught some lost yellow tail snapper. You need to try the New Buccaneer out of Galveston. Sort of a sister ship to the Scat Cat but a little bigger and has four newer engines instead of the two 12-71's the Scat Cat has. Makes shorter trips as a rule (30 hr) but is much cheaper and faster. Both boats have their pluses. I've enjoyed fishing both of them but prefer the New Bucc.

[oc1]

Sounds like quite an improvement over the old Buccaneer out of Corpus.

-steve

[esgeo]

That boat has caught several marlin trolling around. The problem with fishing Perdido is there isn't any place to bottom fish during the day. BTW, tie on a few ounces of weight and fish some bait around the rig in the day time will usually get you some rainbow runners. Good eating. We've even caught some lost yellow tail snapper. You need to try the New Buccaneer out of Galveston. Sort of a sister ship to the Scat Cat but a little bigger and has four newer engines instead of the two 12-71's the Scat Cat has. Makes shorter trips as a rule (30 hr) but is much cheaper and faster. Both boats have their pluses. I've enjoyed fishing both of them but prefer the New Bucc.

Thanks for the insights David. I'll try to get on a New Buccaneer trip this fall once they get a weekend trip slotted.

As for fishing bait with weight, we didn't have any live bait. I suppose squid would have been an alternative I could have tried. They had some sardines as well, but they were pretty long past being fresh. Maybe next trip I'll bring some fresh squid in my cooler.

[esgeo]

Sounds like quite an improvement over the old Buccaneer out of Corpus.

-steve

Great pic!