July 19, 2008 - Garett's Redemption

After weeks, months, years of heckling about whose fault it was that Garett lost the "big one", he has joined us again and boy did he redeem himself.

The catch for the day consisted of 5 Kings retianed, even though we caught about 15 or so. According to the Aggie we had 6, but I guess it's partly my fault for trusting an Aggie math teacher to do the counting. Garett caught the two largest Kings, while he let Michael real in the two smallest.

In addtion to the Kings another 7 spanish mackerals in the 2-6 pound range were boated. The fish were caught on jet heads and feather squid jigs at 6-7 mph. Seas were about 2' when we left dock, and by the time we reached 10 miles out, seas had reduced to 1'. We ended up fishing rig 177 which is 20 miles SE of the Jetties.

July 22, 2007 - The Return of Kele

The seas report was looking good and averaged a mere 1.5 feet so we ventured offshore. We circled a fleet of shrimpers around 20 miles out for 3 hours with no luck. Our luck finally changed in the open water between the fleet and a distant rig.

Kele wrangled in this 40lb jack crevalle in about 15 minutes time. The fish gave her a heck of a work out but was successfully landed and released. The jack fell for an orange and black jet head.

May 31, 2007 - Special Guest, Kele finds plenty of Speckled Trout

With calm seas and the sun setting we fished the north jetty. All of the fish were taken on live shrimp and mostly on popping corks. The fish really turned on right at sunset so we fished until we ran out of shrimp. The total catch consisted of 7 specs, 1 red, 5 sand trout, and 3 sheephead. The individual breakout: Kele lead with 2 specs, 3 sheephead, and 5 sand trout, Mike with 2 specs, and Shawn with a nice 27" red.




The largest specs were 22" and 23".





A nice cleaning table of fish.




This trout takes two sisters to hold up! All jokes aside, they were laughing all trip and still managed to catch a mess of fish.

December 26, 2005 - Tons of Redfish and Snapper!

Today I had the priviledge of having another guest aboard the boat, my sister-in-law Kele. With the water perfectly flat in the morning and 1 foot seas in the afternoon it was a great day to head offshore.



We tried our luck at a rig about 23 miles offshore and did quite well. In all we had 7 Redfish (3 retained), 6 of which were over 28". Redfish weren't the only thing biting, we also boated over 20 Red Snapper, but unfortunately all by one were below 15". In addition there were 2 black drum caught in the 24-'28" range.



All fish were caught on squid (on the bottom) or spanish sardines freelined. The wind was 2-5 knots in the morning and 5-10 knots in the afternoon with a high of 71. The water temperature was a cool 54 degrees.

December 18, 2005 - Lone Flounder

Today I was joined by my sister and my niece. It was a cold and windy day in Galveston, too windy to venture outside of the ship channel. We tried the trusted trout cove, but had no luck. In the GYB cove we (Kim actually) found some fish. Kim brought in this nice 18" flounder and lost one other. Not a bad outing for just 2 hours of fishing.

November 12, 2005 - Flounder and Trout

Finally a flounder!!! Well today the men of the boat were shown up by the queen of the boat. Shawn brought in her first Flounder, estimated at 19". All together 8 Sand Trout, 1 Croaker, and 1 Flounder was boated. Half of the fish came from the North Jetty and the other half from the infamous "Trout Cove". Surprisingly enough all the fish were caught on live shrimp

October 18, 2005 - Red Snapper, Redfish, Spanish Mackeral and Trout

After a long day at work, starting at 5:30 in the morning, the lure of a flat ocean was just too much. At 3:00 Michael, Shawn and I decided we had worked long enough for the day and left to go fishing. By 3:30 we were on the water and out at a rig 25 miles off by 4:15.



The seas were very calm, around 1 foot, and we had clear skys. Total bag for the day was very good considering we only fished for an hour and 45 minutes. Michael got his first keeper redfish (2 to be exact) and 2 red snapper.





I was able to get in 1 red snapper, 2 spanish mackeral and one nice sand trout. All the fish were caught on squid except the mackeral, which went for Spanish Sardines that were freelined.

The lesson of the day though came as soon as we got to the rig. Upon our initial inspection of the area we saw some fish tailing in the water. At first we thought they were stupid spadefish, but we realized that they were too large. We decided to try trolling by a couple passes with jet heads, but it only appeared to break up the school and did not get a strike.

After Michael pulled in his first redfish minutes later it finally struck me what we had witnessed. It was a school of redfish on the top of the water. I had noticed a faint orangish/red color glimmer through the water, but I never would have thought we'd find a school of reds 25 miles offshore. Someone should have warned this newbie that redfish can be found so far out.