Captain's Journal

  The last couple of weeks is a prime example of why Louisiana is the sportsman’s paradise.  I left the deer camp in time to drop off a couple of deer at the processers and head to Venice for six days of fishing. I tried to squeeze a duck hunt in between all of this but I couldn’t seem to wake up. But I missed a easy and quick hunt with limits for everyone.  Now on to the fishing. I started this series of trips off with Franklin Hedley and his buddies from South Carolina. I had a tough act to follow since the last time they fished with me this summer we put 13 yellows in the boat and was home early.  This trip sarted off on the right foot with all the mullet you would ever want and plenty of perfect hardtails. The first fish of the day was a blue that popped up behind a mullet but he would never commit to eating. After that the grand tour of the gulf started we hit three more rigs and at the third rig we finaly managed to get something in the box a 29” yellowfin. The day was really not going well for us at this time. But I still had one more rig to hit. Thankfully this rig was holding some dolphin and we quickly put five very nice dolphin in the box for a pretty decent consolation prize. If you wanted to count all of the cudas it was a banner day for them.

  The following day I had Steve Gibishar and his wife out for Steve’s 50^th birthday. I was going to write something up but he beat me to it so I am just going to be a little lazy and copy his post.

Well we decided to go with Capt. Mike Ellis on Relentless for my 50th birthday fishing trip. It was definitely a good call. Capt. Mike has a very appropriate name for his business and boat as he was the most tenacious capt. I’ve ever fished with. He was relentless in trying to get us our tuna. I don’t think I’ve ever fished with a harder working capt. and he was a genuinly nice guy. We’re already trying to figure out how soon we can afford to go again.
One thing that differs from trips in Venice to trips in Florida is that you pay for a trip, not a specific amount of hours. I’ve been on boats out of Destin where we didn’t have much fish when the bite picked up, only to have the capt. tell us that we were out of time and had to head back in. But for 175.00 an hour, we could stay out longer. With Capt. Ellis, we paid for a trip, and he was going to do whatever it took to get us our fish. We left at 6:00 in the morning and got back in at around 7:30 PM. The bite started late and he was determined to get us our fish. I spoke with him a few days after the trip and he said that he didn’t get back in till midnight on his trip the day after ours. That’s determination!

My wife Char thought the boat was comfortable.
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Here’s our fist of four tuna coming up.
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This is where it all happens.
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Here’s the Capt. himself.
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I’m whooped on this one, it was a little bigger than the others.
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I finally won.
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This is what we went there for.
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My wife working on one. (counting the dolphin, she outfished me)(again)
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My wife savoring the heart of her first yellowfin.
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My wife with one of her three dolphin, all about the same size.
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The final result, four yellowfins and three dolphin.
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I want to thank all the people who recommended Capt. Ellis as the trip made for a very memorable birthday. For those of you that haven’t been tuna fishing in Venice, you’re denying yourself a great time. 

Posted in Fishing Reports

Posted in Fishing Reports

I ran a trip on saturday the 11th for Kerry of Outer Limits charters as part of a big corporate trip. We all like to only post the incredible trips but you have to post the good with the bad and the so-so trips. The weather guessers were calling for a front to come in and push the seas from 2-4 to 4-6 by late afternoon. They were wrong but only by a few hours and a few feet to start out. I got to the marina without a breath of wind so I decided to roll the dice and head to a rig a little over 90NM from the dock. As I cleared the pass things still looked perfect. That is until I hit the first of several bait stops that day. At the first spot I didn’t have a bump now the pressure starts to mount. Hey no problem my next spot is only a few more miles farther offshore and in the same general direction we are headed. But as you guessed it the bait was on vacation as they were at the next three spots. So now I am 35 miles offshore with no livebait to show for my efforts. I didn’t want to make the long run and gamble on the bait  being where I was going to fish. Especialy since the bait was really thick in all the other spots I hit so far. I had to do it so off we went another 40 miles or so to the next bait (hopefully) and tuna spot. The pressure is like a ton of bricks now with no bait in the well. At least some of the pressure was off my shoulders as the next spot the perfect baits came aboard 6 at a time. Perfect right well almost the bait was there but no tuna. My crew got the bean bags back out for another 20 something mile run farter offshore. This rig had been good to me all summer so my confidence was high. Now thing started going my way to a extent. We had two swing and misses just a couple of minutes after the baits went out. Then the rainbow runners found us and were putting a hurting on our bait supply. But the action was as fast as I could get a bait out and it was most of the crews first time offshore. All the activity from the rainbow runners attracted the attention of a lone cow dolphin. Which was Martene’s first dolphin ever. The next bite was the one we were looking for and Kelly made pretty quick work out of a 60-70lb yellow. Now I had the momentum I needed and I put out three baits to double up on the deep line and a flat line. Jimmy got to eat the heart out of a 60-70lb yellow as Kelly did on his first yeelowfin also. The second part of the double was a 30lb fish that was on the deep line Mike managed to keep him out of the other line. And both were soon in the fishbox. I set back up and caught two throw back yellows. And then Mike made the call to head back since they had a charter bus waiting to leave at 5PM. This was the best move made all day. Since the front that was susposed to be on top of us was still not here. And I was ready to go to another rig. But as we left the rig I heard a few radio reports of very slow fishing and with the freshning wind we headed for the marina. The weather played out pretty nice until about the last 15 miles or so then I had to stand up and actualy drive the boat and play captain. But by the time we hit the jetty it was blowing 20-25 knots the river was even choppy. I never thought he weather was that bad offshore. Maybe it was because of the awsome ride of the 33 Freeman. All in all it was a good day no fish were lost due to tackle or angler error so we were batting a thousand right there. We beat the oncoming front in and my crew took the pot for biggest fish they had with the other boats fishing.

Capt. Mike

Posted in Fishing Reports

I have decided to start doing walk on charters. Recently I have had a bunch of calls from guys that only had one or two in there group and are looking for a few more to make the trip a happen. I am offering the trips at $475 a man with a mininium of four on the trip and of course a max of six. I am going to start running these trips on Fridays. Everyone needs a three day weekend every once and awhile. All fish will be split between every angler on board. But I will leave that that portion up for you guys to handle. The only other expense is a fishing license for $5 and whatever gratuity you see fit. To hold your spot all you need to do is give me a call.

Capt. Mike

Posted in Fishing Reports

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