Our trip to Venice was canceled, so DeepBlueGulf and I decided to try our shot at getting spots on the Big E for Thursday and Friday. We were able to get spots...so it was off to Freeport.

We took off to Freeport and boarded the Big E...and it was a ROUGH trip out. We were told that the seas were 11 ft. with long intervals when we left. I have not been seasick since I was around 12 years old until Thursday. My intentions for this trip was to hurl a topwater popper....not my stomach contents....<grin>.

We set out for Gunnison with stops for bait and bottom fishing on the way. We made bait in about 10 or 15 minutes....it was the fastest catching of bait that I've ever seen!

The bottom fishing on the way to Gunnison resulted in a mixture of AJ's, snapper, blackfin, etc. We arrived at Gunnison late...around 10pm - 11pm and started drifting which turned out to be a very fast drift. Blackfin were boated on jigs and there were flying fish all over the place. We were all pretty excited and expected to see a pretty good yellowfin tuna bite. Much to our dismay....the tuna bite never materialized. We fished hard...trying every way conceivable to catch those yellowfins....but were only able to boat one nice 50 lb. yft.

We took off towards shore after daybreak to stop at a few of the captain's spots for AJ's, snapper, and grouper. The bottom fishing was pretty nice. Around 5 warsaw groupers, 5 scamp, many nice sized red snapper, (up to 20 lbs.), some nice AJ's, (one up to around 80-90 lbs.), and a few other fish were boated, (i.e. amaco jacks, beeliners, etc.).

All in all it was a very good trip...a nice mess of fish for all of the great people on the boat. I did get to test the 5'6" OTI jiggin rod on some AJ's...but I'll post that in a different thread....(great jigging rod!!). DBG, snagged and I got together today to clean the fish and package them up....a nice pile of fish.

It was great time fishing with some familiar faces....many great people. Thanks for the opportunity to fish with you guys....it was a very good trip!

Ummm

Where are the pictures?

shall we start calling you .. "RALPH"??? LOL!!! try those same waves on one of the DSH boats... think it was Tuna 2... whooo weee!! Glad yall had fun, and caught some fish!!

I guess you can call me Hurl.
I think that J.P. is going to have some pics to post. I didn't have my camera on this trip...(just a video cam and I didn't get much footage after the fishing started).

You liked the OTI rod? I am waiting for them to come out with it in a spinner model.