If there is anyone who has worked on offshore rigs and would fish from them, I would like to read some posts about that experience. Those rig jobs have always fascinated me. Seems like very hard work, but you are offshore. Has to be some monster fish around those things.
My father-in-law used to work in the oil fields in the gulf. He was telling me that he would ride arround in a tender to some of the unmanned pumping stations and such. He would then cast to the structure and pull Cobia off of them. Then would take the fish to the crews of nearby drilling platforms.
I've heard a lot of stories from the old days about some big sharks being caught off the rigs when they threw the chow hall scraps over, but these days they don't let you fish any more because of safety issues.
Kind of a cruel irony….these days you can live/work on the rig….but can’t fish from it…..OR, you could drive your expensive boat up to it and fish toward it…..but you can’t touch it.
Too bad nobody gets the best of both worlds these days. Probably some lawyers thought of it.
The guys that work on the shallow rigs (rigs without quarters) fish off of them. I see it all the time. Most of these guys are doing maintenance work (Sandblasting, painting, etc). on the rigs and fish during break time. I saw a guy lift up a 15 pound snapper over 40' to the helicopter platform where he was fishing from this year. He rod didn't have the power so he hand-lined up to top.
The placement of the rigs in the 1960's was the main cause of the Jewfish being wiped out. The rigs were jewfish magnets. Scuba guys would jump over and spear them. A lot of these were in 500+ pound range. They would also catch them from the jetties and piers in the 40's and 50's.
MrBill That is a great picture. Some of my family members have/do work offshore and they have some tales about whopper fish. Huge sharks!
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