After all the wind we were battling I had to endure another bump in the road of life. My back surgery on the 20th of Feb. went well and I am back on the water. It is amazing how great I feel.
I went offshore Friday night and we had a good time.
I went out on the Cougar as the deckhand. I still have to wear my brace for two more weeks for things like this but there are no other restrictions. The party was about 3 hours late getting to the dock. We left around 5:00 pm. We cleared the southwest pass jetties as the sun fell. At our first stop the action was not there and the water was not a good color for tuna. We moved to another rig and although the water was much nicer the bite was not on. On our third stop the fish were there but the bite was slow. We managed 8 blackfin of nice size. All were 25-30 pounds. This was the test because my back went out about 4 months prior when I bent over the gunnel to gaff a fish. After the second gaff job I knew all was well.
The bite stopped around midnight so we grilled up one of our fish. Soon after with 3 of 10 sick the rest went to sleep with happy bellys. We moved to another close by rig and cut up another tuna for bait. Only two stayed up and fished. Soon after getting there we nailed a nice almicojack. Our next fish was a warsaw grouper around 60 pounds. We went back down with the setup and soon had a nice 45 pound amberjack. Then the sharks moved in. One of them took a bait on stainless cable line designed to pull large grouper out of rigs. I leadered this 9-10 foot hog and fought with it almost dehooking it prior to it breaking the cable and getting away with the hook. Around first lite we picked up 2 nice beeliners (Vermillion snapper).
When daybreak came we trolled for wahoo. We only had one strike and lost it. It hit a new lure and the teeth marks prooved it was a whoo.
On the way in we stopped at a rig that held beeliners 2 weeks ago. The red snapper were thick and seeing they are out of season we soon picked up and called it a day.
I had no problem gaffing the 8 tuna and the jacks. I did not gaff the warsaw grouper, but I did bend over into the fishbox and lift it out and put it into the barrel to get it to the cleaning station. My back is back and better than expected. Loosing #4&5 disk only put me down for 1 month.
Life is Good!
Capt Hoop
Our Freedom