Max, Aleta posted this on AMS last year sometime.
Long version - Venice, LA
I have been following the fishing out of Venice, LA for some time but had never been able to put it together. This year I finally made contact with the right people down there and got the info I needed to make sense out of it all. With a break between storm fronts and an open charter date available due to a cancellation we pulled the trigger.
We flew from SoCal to New Orleans last Wednesday, rented a car and drove the two hour drive down the along the Mississippi River to Venice, LA. Venice is literally end of the road - the last town furtherest down the Delta even though it is still a ways up the river from the mouth of the river and the Gulf. Venice is a very small town but tons of shrimp boats and massive amounts of oil service and refinery infrastructure. The Cypress Cove marina at Venice is recognized as the premier blue water fishing marina in this part of the Gulf and is very nice.
We made it down to the marina around 5pm when the fleet was returning and saw some high quality Yellow Fin Tuna hitting the docks. Jose Wejebe was there for three days of fishing for his show on ESPN "Spanish Fly". We had some great Cajun food that night and were hopeful that the weather would hold for Thursday's fishing.
We met up with our captain , Chris Moran, and deckhand, Gabe the next morning at 6:30am and shoved off. We Chris through Reel Peace Charters, who also runs a fleet of five 26' Glacier Bay Cats. Chris' boat "Cajun Made" is a locally built 27' aluminum center consol with twin Yamaha outboards. We had to pick out way out through some tight channels in dense fog but finally it cleared when we hit the River and it we were flying down the Mississippi and out into the Gulf at 34knts.
The Midnight Lump is 39 miles from Venice out in the Gulf of Mexico
and is a highspot that rises to about 200 feet from the surrounding 600 foot depths. Each winter the tuna come into the Lump to feed on the bunches of bait that hovers around the spot.
The boats anchor up on the spot and start chunking with cut up pogies ( looks like a small caballito to me). There were about 20 boats anchored up this day but on weekends the number of boats is way higher. Water was about 68 and much greener than the water we find Yellow Fin Tuna in the Pacific.
It didnt take too long to get bonitos in the chum line, then blackfin and Yellow Fin Tuna. The Yellow Fin Tuna weren't shy and would swim up to the transom and wait for a chunk. Kind of like feeding goldfish - amazing sight. When you tossed your hooked chunk in you might get bit by a 5lbs bonito or a 100lbs tuna. The fish would bite, dissappear for a while and then pop up again. By noon we had our limits and things slowed down so we picked up and ran off to a woking shrimp boat. We pulled up tight into the shrimper's wake
(about 15 feet off his stern!) and chunked to see if any tuna were holding. After no luck on a couple of passed we blasted off to some rigs in the distance.
Around the rigs we caught some jacks & red snapper before the sharks moved in. Headed in and reached Venice around 5pm. Back at the docks we had a few cold ones with the crew & Jose Wejebe, who had wrapped his shoot (really nice guy).
The next morning we slept in and drove back to New Orleans. Had some great food, listened to some blues and had more than a few beers (Damn places have 3 for 1 Happy hour - dangerous).
Just a cool trip overall and so different than what we are used to
in SoCal and Mexico. I'll post some photos.
http://www.sandiegofishing.com/buddy...threadid=10143 
J/K I'm gonna check. I wonder if I'm still banned. I couldn't even view the site before. 
i camped out in the channel in in old Fort built during the civil war.
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