Venice, LA Deep Drop Trip 1/18/15

[Wally15]

Finally made a trip out of Venice. Wx was rough for bottom fishing, 4-5' seas. I did manage a personal best Warsaw and scamp. Wanted to go tuna fishing to the Midnight Lump the next day, but couldn't get enough interest. May have to wait for the August SoA trip to catch my 2nd tuna ever. #1 was a blackfin the size of a football.
Speaking of tuna, check out this 1000# Bluefin caught this week:
http://www.northcarolinasportsman.com/details.php?id=480
Mike

[Tightlines667]

Looks like a good day on the gulf.  Too bad you couldn't hit the lump.  Thanks for sharing.

[gstours]

thanks for sharing the story and pictures.  at least you went thats more than some of us dreamers can say!

[Desert Guy]

Fishing the gulf is always a treat. Who did you charter with?

[MarkT]

What's a deep drop for you guys?  I got back today from a 1 1/2 day trip out of Fishermans Landing in San Diego down 115 miles to Punta Colonet and we were fishing from 180' to 400'. I passed on the drift at 400' for rockfish!  We got 91 Yellowtail, lots of big Reds (Vermillion rockfish), Ling Cod, Boccaccio and 5 spot rockfish.  The YT came on YoYo and dropper loop about 50/50.

[bluefish69]

Mark

This is going to sound bad. In N.Y. & N.J. a deep drop goes 500'-1000' of water. When I fished Cod & Pollack in N.H. shallow was 180' & deep was 400'. These were the normal depths we would fish at the time.

Mike

[MarkT]

I hope you're using electric reels if your dropping 1000' with a bunch of lead.

[Alto Mare]

Mike, you must really go out there, our water stays at around 100', with some patches of 150' here and there.

[Wally15]

Almost all the deep drop fishing we did out of Venice was in 400-550' water. 5# lead weight. Electric reels, thank goodness. Boat was pitching so much in the 4-6' waves that it was tough keeping the bait in the strike zone.
This was my first visit to Venice. If you're not into fishing, you're wasting your time going down there. But BP bought a lot of the charter captains some really nice boats.
Mike

[BMITCH]

Sal, those canyon waters can get pretty darn deep. Tile fish country. 600 to 1000 feet the norm. It's a lot like work. We use window sash weights in the 5 to 7 pounds to plumb the depths. You think twice about reeling up to check your bait

[Alto Mare]

Bob, I know the canyon gets pretty deep, my question was how far out did he go. Was it 80 mile 100 mile or maybe more?

[bluefish69]

Mike, you must really go out there, our water stays at around 100', with some patches of 150' here and there.

If we go 45-50 miles we have close to 200'. The boats that leave from Brooklyn head East to the Sea Bass Wrecks before 12/31/14 that was up to 80 miles but still about 200'. I know a charter boat as of last week was Cod Fishing in 190' & beating up on the Cod 100 Cod caught with 80 keepers. His normal trip is 40-60 Cod in the box per trip. this is a 41' Charter boat.

[Tightlines667]

One of the great things about fishing out of Venice, LA is that the Mississippi delta extends well out on the continental shelf.  This means it is relatively shorter runs to get to deep water.  Good 'Blue Water' can often be found within 8-12 miles of the tip of South or SouthEast Passes, though ocassionally a 30 mile run is in order.  If memory serves me corectly, the Conac rig sits in 500+ feet of water and is about a 12 nauticle mile run.  Of course there is another 12 mile run from Venice to the end of the pass to consider.  We always stayed on a houseboat at Port Eads to avoid this when fishing the area.  Things have definatrly changed down there since we started fishing it in the late 70s though.

[conchydong]

Where I live, we are in 600' just three miles off of the beach. From there the drop off gets gradually slower but it sure is nice to be able to catch Golden Tiles and Snowys in a quick 3 hour morning trip.