12-31-07 Report from Grand Isle

[Reel Screamers]

Man we were happy to see the forecast of a break in the weather for Monday but knew it would only be a short break. From the house Sunday afternoon you could look over the Gulf and see that it was already laying down. Not completely trusting the timing of the forecast we called the customers who were renting a house on the beach and it did not take much to convince them to make it an early departure. The thought was to get it done and get back in case this front was ahead of schedule.

We were pointed south and making good time in a light two foot sea at 4:00 am but that did not last long. As soon as we exited the green 67 degree water into the blue of the canyon at 74 degrees, it roughed up slowing us down a bit but it was still do-able.

We hit the platform just after daylight and as we were setting out the spread the customers were pointing out the surface activity on the down current side of the platform. We made a quick adjustment to the drift and Ian was the hot hand again on this trip. His first bait in the water resulted in the Jerry Brown running off the real. The fish ended up being a football yellowfin but he was plenty legal so the ice was dirty.

As the day went on it became obvious that the fish were being boat and line shy so we scaled the tackle down to light flouracarbon leaders. This resulted in more bites but as you can imagine there is a trade off here. We ended up going 3 for 6 on the yellowfin with the other three lost to broken leaders.

We had debated on rig hopping but decided against it since the seas were building steadily. We knew they had fish around us, they were just acting like fish do sometimes. We elected to stick it out where we were instead of wasting time running aroound in slop.

By noon the seas had built to a solid 5 foot out of the east and we had to head north. The call was made to point it north and get the safety of dry ground under our feet. We made a couple of attempts at trolling for hooters but did not put a lot of time into it before deciding to make it a non stop trip to the dock.

As we passed to the west of the lump you could hear radio traffic from the boats that were fishing there but no real reports. The lack of reports on the regional boards would suggest that it was not a productive day on the lump. It should be any day now that the fish show up there, you just have to be presistant and hit it every chance you get.

As soon as we hit the green water the seas dropped back to the two foot predicted making the rest of the ride in quick and painless. From there is was fresh sushi for the New Years party.

The New Years Party is another story but it basically involved shutting down a whole block with a pig roast and all of the fixings ....... you gotta love Grand Isle.