[CaptEddie]

I ran some trips on the palmetto last week. Th fall pattern is here as there are tons of small tuna around in close mixed in with some bigger fish. We also ran into a bunch of whale sharks one day and even had a huge marlin eat one of our tunas. I think the worst day we still caught about 15 fish. Topwaters were very productive on 10-20 pound fish while live bait produced most of the bigger fish. Every day though we did have encounters with big fish on spinning tackle and as usual we lost a few of those. Frenzy poppers produced the best on the surface.

The first day I had my wifes family on the boat and none of them had ever been offshore. They thought they knew what they were getting into but they were wrong. They had never thought a fish could fight that hard

We ended up that day with 4 good yellows, 7 small yellows and about a dozen blackfin.

On day two I had Gordon Richarson and his crew on the boat. The morning bite was off at the rig I had been fishing so I ran around and fished whale sharks for half the day and must have caught 30 assorted small tunas on topwater before we gave that up. We then headed back to the rig where it was game on with the yellows. In the next two hours we caught nine yellowfin with five of them being real quality fish and we probably threw back another 10 small yellowfin.

On saturday I had Chris and his crew from the new orleans area on the boat. We decided to hit a different rig first and it paid off as we put three nice yellowfin in the boat before 9 am. Then they just shut off as we moved around to a couple rigs before we found a bite to the west of where we had started. We put one more 50 pound yellowfin in the boat and boxed a pair of nice dolphin including the first bull I have seen in a while.

 

[hdc77494]

Eddie,

Where can I get a good primer on fishing Venice offshore? Where to locate bait, how to catch it. How far out past the jetties to tuna or marlin, good maps, best season?

Thanks,

Dave

 

[SkeeterRonnie]

Navionics makes a good mapping chip that shows bottom structure, and quite a few rigs.... I was impressed while previewing the mapping chip.

Along with the structure, you need a good sea temp chart- to locate the current rips. Flash Earth ...satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth in Flash gives you a good aerial view of how the channels look out of Venice... but remember they change around quite frequently- you should follow another boat out of there ... HEard Capt Eddie will let you follow him out(if you can keep up)....

 

[Fishhead56]

Hire a guide or charter for a day or 2 to investagate an area new to you.
The rates in Venice for charters aren't bad if you look at a 4 way split.
I plan to finalize 2 days of fishing w\Eddie this week for early Feb.

Kev

 

[CaptEddie]

Dates are booking up pretty quickly so you need to get in touch with me