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Louisiana - Venice & the Gulf of Mexico
Capt. Damon McKnight
November 6, 2000
Venice - Saltwater Fishing Report
What Offshore Fishing For Yellowfin Tuna Is Like In Louisiana.
The offshore fishing in Louisiana has been awesome the past week. We had a group of guys in from Beaumont, Texas the last couple of days that wanted to catch some big Yellowfin Tuna. The Tuna fishing in Louisiana is as good as it gets from October-April. But, this time of year we have mullets that move out of the passes into the Gulf of Mexico in search of deeper water. When the mullets move into the Gulf, the Tuna, as well as a lot of other fish know it. We look for the huge schools of mullet in about 600+ foot of water and you can almost guarantee the big fish are underneath them eating them one by one. We found our first school of mullet for the day and sure enough the fish we were looking for were there. We pulled up to the school of mullet and right in the middle of the school was about a 12ft. Thresher shark, awesome sight. We put the daisy chains out and trolled around the school of mullet and within 1 minute we had on our first Yellowfin tuna. We got him in the boat and he went about 150lbs. It took about 45 minutes to land him and during this time the Tuna were busting everywhere. In the school of mullets, you could see the yellow sickles of the Tuna sticking up everywhere. It doesn't happen like this very often but all of the fish were over 100lbs. Just about anything we put out we'd catch fish on. On the second pass around the school we had 4 knockdowns and pulled the hooks on two big fish, but we still had the other two on. They were all huge Yellowfin Tuna and the fight was going to last a while. So, we threw out some Yozuri Hydro-Tigers, which is nothing but a big chug bug that floats on the surface. Now, if you can imagine about a 150lb. bass hitting a surface bait, that is about what it looked like. The Tuna were coming up and knocking the lure out of the water and before it would come back down another one would grab it. These lures are only 5 inches long and weigh about 3.5 ounces so you have to use them on light tackle. We use the spinning reels with braided line so we have enough line to fight the fish and still have 85lb. break strength, but you do have to use about a 5ft shock leader to keep the line from breaking on the initial run. We ended up getting three more Yellowfin tuna in weighing about 120-135lbs. a piece. On the third pass, we had two 60 pounders and one 75 pounder and the guys were ready to call it a day. The fishing down here in south Louisiana can't be beat. Also, there were a few boats live baiting with mullets and two boats had blue marlin on when we were leaving so that just goes to show you what the fishing is like down here. The wahoo should be moving in soon. Can't wait! Thanks for reading our report. Capt. Damon McKnight
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