Capt John 12 Hour Offshore Saturday July 2, 2016

With Captain Johnny Williams heading up the show the party boat Capt. John left Galveston’s Pier 19 with 81 of us anglers aboard. The first scheduled fishing stop was to be in the area of the V.A. Fogg wreck pieces about 45 miles to the SSW of the island. As is the case on occasion a destination change was made due to the circumstances, a number of small boats were fishing the Fogg. That change meant running farther offshore by about fifteen miles. The gulf had about a 2 to 3 foot swell, the sky was a clear blue and the gulf was a darker shade of clear blue. The red snapper were there and seemingly unable to miss the chance of coming aboard. During our time there a red snapper limit to fifteen pounds was taken along with a couple of other snapper species.

After fishing two bottom spots for the red snapper limit a inshore run was made to fish a pair of surface platforms. The two production platforms had spadefish, bluerunner and a bluefish being caught and retained. Several red snapper from undersize to about ten pounds were caught and immediately released to be caught another day.

After the two platforms it was off to the house with this total catch:

162 Red snapper to 15#

4 Lane snapper

1 Vermillion snapper

1 Bluefish

2 Bluerunner

Steve Bamburg, Katy, Had a red snapper limit to 8# taken on Carolina rigged Spanish sardines from just off the bottom.

Patrick Lemire, Texas City, My red snapper limit to 8# was caught on a 5 oz, squid tipped, red/white snapper slapper. Hits came on the sink, from the mid-depths to the bottom. My “ling watch”at the platforms wasn’t productive but the suspense while looking and paying attention to the water made it interesting. They do show up at times and it’s good to be “at the ready”…next time, maybe it will be show time.

See you on the Capt. John!

Patrick Lemire