Friday, November 14, 2014

Quite while your ahead

We just finished running the last two trips of the year, we had seven trips to run, but the weather got us again so we had to cancel the last five days of fishing. The sad thing is that the two days preceeding the last two trips we ran had been canceled by us, due to the bad weather NOAA bad forecast. As it turned out the weather was great, and the fishing was even better. The first of the two days was a Saturday, it was a little tough fishing, but Sunday turned out to be the best day of the year! Turns out a giant ball of Poggies was being escorted around the Gulf by an equally large school of giant Yellowfin. The guys that got to fish it were rewarded with incredible catches! Capt. Josh Howard had 11 giants and the rest of the fleet had anywhere from 4-9 giants in the ice hole when the day was done. I really hated missing it all but the crew I had for those days had a two day drive to get to Venice, and when it came time for them to either head this way or throw in the towel, NOAA was saying it was a no go!? Frustrating!!!!
The two days we did get to run were absent of Poggie balls, and shrimp boats as its late enough that most of the shrimp are out o the marshes and offshore so we resorted to running long like we do all summer, but without the daily intell we have during the summer because we'd been land locked for over a week. We were all basically flying blind, and hoping for the best. We picked away at them the first day, and really struggled the second day .
All in all we had a great year, and caught lots of fish with great friends and anglers, just kind of sad to end such a good year on such a down note. Guess November is for Hunting! Now I remember why I don't like booking trips in November!!
Capt. Jerry Allen
www.pocolococharters.com
409-651-0765

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Shrimp boat season

This shrimp boat season has been odd to say the least.  For a short period of time the shrimp boats were in a normal spot, and they held plenty of fish so all is well, right? ..... That lasted about two days , and then we went back to re inventing the wheel every day. The old saying "every day is different" was a understatment!! Very seldom we did the same thing from the day before. The good news is that every day we'd find them!! More days than not though, I felt like it was 4th and long with under 2 minutes in the game before we'd finally get em. We were rewarded with some really nice fish while fishing in some really weird places using some really weird techniques. Some days chunks were the answer, others it was hard tails on the bomb that would tickle there fancy, and other days it was 2 foot long mullet swimming on the surface they wanted. The two best fish for the last little stretch were a 154 lb. , and a a 177 lb. Yellowfin. Along they way we picked up more blackfin than I care to count, and lots of yellowfin in the 70 - 100 lb. range .
The day we caught the 177 lb. was one of the more memorable days, not so much because of that fish, rather just the day in general. The weather was better than great, the crew was better than great, and we wound up fishing a green on blue rip that was loaded with giants!!! The first fish we hooked dumped a 50 wide????  Then we up with the big boy and and another slob, that kept us buisy for over an hour. While we were hooked up to these big boys, the giants started destroying blackfin tuna. After breaking off one of the giants and landing the other, we imeadiatley deployed two more baits while the sun was getting low in the horizon. Almost instantly we doubled again, broke another giant off, but the other stayed hooked  till well after dark. When we finally got it close enough to see it we were a tad bit scared to see a VERY BIG MAKO!!! It was so big the only way to move it was for the angler to lift with all his might while I would simultaneously hand line the fish. Jimmy was scrambling to get the the harpoon ready to fly when the leader finally gave up!!!
No matter, I was loving life and living having the opprotuity to fish in an aquatic version of Jerrasic park!!!! The land of the giants!!
Thea latest cold front is going to keep us off the water for a while, but can't wait to get back after em.
Capt. Jerry Allen
www.pocolococharters.com