Captain's Journal

Spring is here, folks, and Venice is the place to be for outrageous offshore action aboard Relentless Sportfishing! Not only is the Yellowfin Tuna bite on fire but we’re burning up drags with Wahoo and going through plenty of filet knives cleaning Swordfish. NOW is the time to book your epic fishing adventure if you want to fish with us in March or April!

Everybody Yell “Wahoo!”

Normally, we’re all about the Tunas when fishing out of world-famous Venice, Louisiana. However, our clients have been screaming “Wahoo!” when we’re fishing around the oil rigs well offshore. That’s because some stud Wahoo have been abusing our trolled artificials as we scout for Tunas.

As you can see above, these are no “weehoos.” These are fully-grown toothy critters that just love to melt drags and break hearts. If you book with us in March or early April, you can go toe-to-toe with one of the fastest species in the Gulf. Period.

Green Light on Yellowfins

Our fishery is best known for monster Yellowfin Tunas and they refuse to be upstaged by the red-hot Wahoo bite. We’ve been finding huge Yellowfins outside of 30 miles and they simply cannot refuse the live mullet, live hardtails or even the specially-crafted chunks that we’re pitching to them.

As you can see, we’ve had no problems getting our clients to tangle with these butterballs, with the Yellowfins ranging from 60 lbs to 100 lbs and even larger.

As if these giants weren’t enough action, there are large numbers of Blackfin Tuna mixed in with the Yellowfins and the Blackfins are averaging a respectable 20 lbs to 30 lbs themselves. If you’re lucky, they can get even bigger!

Daytime Swordfish Too

Recently, the Yellowfin bite has been so good that our clients have been catching their fill of Tunas early into our trips. We can’t just head back in. So, we’ve been daytime dropping down for Swordfish in depths exceeding 1,800 feet.

Swordfishing is truly an amazing endeavor and takes a fair amount of skill and seamanship to keep the bait on target and know when a Swordfish is hooked up. Fortunately, our Relentless Sportfishing Team includes captains who make “daytiming” look easy! This kind of fishing really needs to be experienced to be believed. Call us to book your trip!

Another option for our clients has been deep dropping on a few of our “honey holes” for yet more tasty species like Snapper, Grouper and even Golden Tilefish. Check out this big Tile!

So, you can see that none of our Relentless Sportfishing clients are going home hungry. We are sending our clients home with enough fish to feed a city block!  Let’s get out there in comfort and safety in our 36′ Yellowfin center console. You won’t have much time to relax as we get you to the fishing grounds in a hurry courtesy of our triple outboards. You will feel like you are on rails.

Isn’t it time that you got in on the action before the Spring patterns give way to Summer? What are you waiting for? Come be our guest as we introduce you to one of the world’s premier fisheries for the angling experience of a lifetime!

Tight Lines
Captain Neil  & Captain Joey

Posted in Fishing Reports

Tagged: blackfin tuna, hardtails, louisiana, mullet, pogies, sharks, Swordfish, Swordfish Fishing, Tuna, venice, venice sportfishing, Wahoo, yellowfin, yellowfin tuna

Happy New Year to you and your family.  We had quite the year and we are thankful for everyone that chose Relentless Sportfishing. We look forward to fishing with a lot of our repeat customers this year and putting them on trophy tuna, swordfish and more!

January has started out great with some big fish coming over the gunnels. While each day is different, one thing has been consistent: the fish are big!  Using a variety of methods we are racing out to the fishing grounds in search of feeding tuna.  The birds, shrimp boats, oil rigs, rips, etc have all been good indications of where the fish have been holding, however the best indicator has been your captain.  By fishing daily, we generally know where to find the fish from the day before.  This is a huge advantage over the “part-time” fleet.

Using our years of logs and time on the water has been our key to success and finding the big fish has been our specialty.  We are so happy our customers are not only experiencing Venice Louisiana fishing, but they are getting to experience some of the best fishing around here in 10 years.

Here in January, we already fished 2 bachelor parties as well as 1 corporate event and several private parties.  Each group has done a great job reeling in these beast. I am hoping the weather holds this winter season for all our clients on the calendar already as I expect the fishing to continue to be very good!

Here are a few pictures from our Offshore trips:

As we get deeper into our Winter and approach spring, we will be looking for Wahoo as well.  Last year the Wahoo season was pretty good.  It is nice to slay the tuna and then switch gears to catch some of the biggest wahoo in the country.

If you are looking to go fishing in Venice, LA – we still have several dates available through the end of the spring. Please give us a call and we will get you out there!

Tight Lines
Captain Niel

Posted in Fishing Reports

Tagged: offshore fishing, tuna fishing, venice fishing

“Well, my wife has wanted to do a night in New Orleans for a while. A few months ago I floated the idea of a nice meal there, a casual drive down to Venice the following day and then a tuna trip. Surprisingly enough, she took the bait. Don’t get me wrong, she loves to fish, but it was awesome to think that she was willing to let us spend that kind of expense and time away from home when it essentially revolved around fishing.

Rolled into NOLA around 4:30 on Thursday afternoon and walked around a bit having a drink here and there while waiting on our dinner reservations at Herbsaint and for our friend to fly in from Fort Worth. He got in around 7:30 and we made our dinner reservation just in time. Great meal. I had the musgovey duck leg, which was divine; only complaint is that I could have eaten about 8 of them… fat boys like their food.

Woke up the next day and made our way down to Venice. Got there at the exact same time that another angler did who had driven straight form PC. We got all situated on house boat and had plenty of time to watch some fish come in, have a few drinks, grill some steaks and talk about the day tocome.

Next day came quickly. Here’s Mike’s new 36 Yellowfin at Cypress Cove.

Within no time we had drinks / food loaded, truck parked and we were making our way down the river.

In the picture above we are about to be into open water and ready to net some bait. We saw a few popping out here and there, but not enough to toss on. Rather than spending time (and shoulder ligaments) tossing on onsies and twosies, Mike kept easing down a particular shoal and we found them a good bit thicker maybe 30 minutes later. Two casts and we had probably 80 pogies in the barrel. Time to go fishing!

Live baits, great conditions and we’re ready!

We ran about 30 nm and in no time we have our first customer!

Birthday girl on the rod…

She made short work of an average sized late-May / June fish and in no time it was on deck….

We all high fived and Mike pulled out the heart offered her a bite after her first tuna. She willingly took a chomp out, but didn’t chew for long. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have the picture of this scene, or the one with a nice first-kill swipe of blood across her faith.

After that, we put one line back out and not long after that we caught another similarly sized fish on a live bait. Buddy from TX whooped him pretty quick and we tossed this guy on ice.

After this, we had a little lull, but not much of one. Yours truly wanted to make a move, but we were marking fish above 200’ and Mike said let’s stay put. Most folks were up front chilling on the rail when I saw a fish bust within 100’ off to port. I ran forward grabbed the popper rod and hooked one up on first cast….

Me on the popper rod…

Popper fish in box…

After this our next fish came on a live bait and it was solid… About to come over the rail…

Wife with a hero shot… And CLEARLY best picture of the trip!

Same fish…

Me with the fish…

After this we hooked up on a double. The larger of the two fish hit first (crashed a slow trolled live bait) and then a second rod went off fishing same thing. I hopped on the smaller fish and boated it fairly quickly. We were then sitting on 6 fish. After a good fight (and a little bit of embarrassing rod-passing) we boated another real nice fish. This made 7 nice tunas and bonus fish number 2. We messed around for another 35 minutes or so and headed home. In that 35 minutes I had a fish boil on a popper and we watched another boat put a 35-30 pound fish in. We probably could have soaked out another fish or two, but we had 5 average fish and two real nice ones given the time of the year. That being said, we elected to take Mike’s advice and head for the hill. 

The second bonus-fish…

Same fish with fella from Texas…

After this, we scrubbed the boat real quick and headed that way with a cold beer in hand. What a day! It might have been 11:00 at this point. We had two folks on board that were up for poking around for another fish or two, but as a whole we were all fine with heading on in.
Iced fish about to get the slurry!

While out there we watched two or three fish miss live baits, but not once did we one bend a rod or peel line and miss. IMO, we went 7 for 7 with only two sharks. Fantastic!

Headed in… Ugly, boat, huh?

Picture of ugly tackle with sun at about high noon…

Back at Cypress Cove… we couldn’t find a cart, so I sprayed the dock down for a few minutes and let them lay long enough for a picture with my wife. We could have done better here, but I was in a hurry to get some ice back on them before we made our way to the cleaning table.

Again, no hand cart, so in the truck they went! Keep in mind, we had bed liner nice and cool and dumped plenty of ice on them. They stayed like this for no more than 5 minutes, and then we had them in a cart with ice all over them.

One more look at them…

If you ever go battle with 80+ pound tuna you have a few choices. 1. Learn proper form. 2. Don’t drink beer for two days prior in NOLA and marina. 3. Bring a guy like the one pictured below. Yeah, he did a lot of pumping and winding:

Also got to see a 297 warsaw at the dock… or at least it’s carcass…

Since getting home we’ve been eating pretty well:

Tuna, avocado BLT….

Start here…

Finish here…

A little poke. This…

Into this…

With what’s left over you try to eat…

Great stuff!

Can’t wait to get back! Hard to go wrong in South LA when you have great weather and a great captain!

Posted in Fishing Reports

Tagged: tuna fishing, venice fishing

We are finishing up a string of trips. And looking forward to a day of downtime. Tomorrow, to do boat maintenance. The fishing has been ok ,but the numbers are down some. But the ones.We are targeting are all in the 100 to 160 range. Chaz had the biggest today at 118 and a bunch of snapper. I had a 109 and snapper and Ed had a good one, but didnt get the size.

Posted in Fishing Reports

Tagged: tuna fishing, venice fishing