Capt. John 10 Hour Offshore Sunday Oct. 16,2016

At the wheel once again the Party Boat Capt. John left Galveston’s Pier 19 , today he had 60 Anglers aboard.  After a smooth ride out, in a southerly direction today, the first stop was made by a marker bouy at about 11 miles out.  The reason for the stop was a group of Ling circling the bouy just below the surface.  A keeper was caught and kept, a undersize was caught and released, then another plus and minus came into the picture. The biggest Ling of the group was hooked and then lost with it’s first run, against a sung to tight reel drag, caused the anglers braid main line to bury into the spools braid and lock it up.  That lock up caused a break off or pulled hook.  The reason for the mentioning is to be sure when spooling up your reel with braid be sure that it’s wound on with a lot of tension.   Braid must be wound on the reel tight and with a criss cross, side to side motion to prevent digging in on the spool with a big fish on, which could result in a break off as it did today…  Something to think about, and remember.

After leaving the bouy the offshore run continued for about another 15 miles where a couple of platforms were fished.  Using the standard party boat baits of cut squid or Spanish Sardines, thru the water column, had some of the standard results for the area. The move to the south today as opposed to Saturdays easterly direction fishing was to hopefully pick up the Spadefish and Shark numbers caught. Well it sort of happened in that the Spadefish catch improved but the shark number went from one to none. The Gulf trout were there in numbers and a sort of unusual species made a showing. The “unusual” was a pair of Guaguanche, a relative of the Barracuda.

The catch today was made up of:

156 Atlantic Spadefish

184 Sand Trout

7 Blue Runner

1 Ling

1 Spanish Mackerel

1 Mangrove Snapper

3 Lane Snapper

1 Croaker

1 Jackfish

3 Bluefish

2 Guaguanche

See you on the Capt. John!

Patrick Lemire