andyyar

Sunday wasa gloriousday to be out in the Pond of Mexico. There was hardly a ripple on the water as we headed out on Joseph Yarborough's 38 Jupiter with a late afternoon tuna bite on the brain. First stop was at a tank hoping to make bait. Couldn't fight our way through the snapper so we elected to proceed out to the rigs hoping to be greeted with some hardtails. We arrived at the MP 255A and were able to put some bar jacks and a couple of very tempermental hardtails in the boat. The hardtails were busting up at the surface but refused our offerings of sabikis, gotcha plugs, champs spoons, feather rig daisy chains, voodo, jedi force, and all the usual tactics. A couple finally fell victim to a quarter ounce diamond jig , and were quickly sacrificed to some fiesty aj's:



Sarah Schilling battling an AJ



37 lbs

April's AJ

After we tired ourselves on the aj's we decided to drop to the bottom with some cut bait which yielded this nice scamp for sarah



and a Snowy for Angelo Depaola



The Hiltons charts indicated some 75.5 degree Blue Water starting at petronius and running southwest so we jogged over to petronius to scan for signs of life. Passed a pretty distinct color change en route and the water turned a beautiful cobalt blue. It felt like summer had arrived. Petronius wasn't feeling all that fishy so we decided to run inshore to the 252's and try our hand at some more hardtails in the cooler waterand return the the beercan or points beyond in the late afternoon hoping to find the tuna surfacing. After being shrugged off by the hardtails for a second time, we elected to proceed back offshore and pull some lures just to spite them. We approached the beer can and deployed amagnificent spread of 7 Fred Archer spreader bars staggered throughout the water column. Since there wasn't a lot of bait out there we figured we would put our own artificial baitball behing the boat to coax the fish up. It didn't take long for the barracuda's to take advantage of our kind offering and after triple barracuda knockdowns, and two lost chasebaits we hauled the bars back in and gave the tuna some time to wake up for dinner as we set up our chunk drift. The gulf was so still you could see your reflection as if looking in a mirror. We cut the engines and established a slow and steady chunk slick that that quickly attracted the attention of some pretty large sharks and a school of no less than 35 Barracudas. We fed them a couple of bar jacks in an effort to negotiate their departure, but they had an attitude problem like the hardtails we encountered earlier. We decide to ignore them and focus our attention on the 30 to 60# schoolie yellowfin that were rolling and patrolling the surface looking for the bait that wasn't there. The tuna turned their nose at our perfectly cascaded chunks, and showed no interest in our live baits so we had no choice but to reach deeper into the arsenal and resort to ghetto bass fishing bait presentation. Since Angelo still had a tackle box leftover from the 80's we were able to put our hands on a couple leaded swim shad, and an undersized rattle trap that somehow yielded a few nice eating yellowfin. I think the tuna were in such disbelief that we would actually throw these at them that they finally consented and ate a couple of the artificial lures as a show of good faith.

April's tuna



Angelo on the Gaff



Tuna underwater (note reflection's, water so calm)

After a few jokes about how we should have brought a tube of crickets and some nightcrawlers, we decided to try the chunk again and were rewarded some little yellows:



We were running out of bait and the tuna were popping all around us so we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best with the two chunklines we were floating into our slick. Sarah's puddle of line started to race down into the water and she came tight on whatwe figured was a small tuna. She pulls what was obviously some sort of snapper over the gunnels which I thought was strange for the Neptune, but was excitedly ready to cut into more chunks. It was about that time that Angelo comes racing to the back of the boat shouting expletives at me to put the knife down, professing that Sarah had just landed what was obviously a state record yellowtail snapper. Were it not for Angelo I probably would have fed it to the barracuda's, but instead we went through the confirmation process yesterday on Sarah's new state record 5.84# Yellowtail Snapper. Congrats!









We came back in under the spotlight of a perfect full moon and are happy to welcome the arrival of the summer pattern.

Andy

FYI-Scattered grass between Petronius and the Beercan. Water temp at 255a approx 70 degrees and clean green. Water temp at Petronius and Beercan 75-76 degrees and cobalt blue. Tuna stomachs full of tiny glass minnows and not much else. Hardtails at the surface but the tunas were focused on smaller baits and all of our hookups came at 20 ft. or deeper. Saw a rat blue's dorsal and tailfin surface under the neptune. Live electric green Weedlines formed up inside the shelf, but no life on them other than small glass minnows.

JoshH

Looks like a great trip, very informative post too. I've always wanted to go to those MP rigs and catch big Ajs and deep water grouper. :bowdown

waterboy6921

Very nice report and congrats on the snapper. :clap

whatcon

Great report and pics. Thanks for posting.

ilander

great report and pics. :bowdown :bowdown

nb&twil

best report ive read in a long time! thanks for sharing! congrats on the record yellowtail. sounds like a trip to remember forever. and i bet the ride is fun in that 38 with with trip 250s!! especially running on glass, wow. thanks again for sharing!!

Chris V

:clapCongrats on the snapper and thanks for the awesome report, very informative. Can't wait to kill a couple of fish myself.

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recess

Nice flag, I wonder what it was doing up here so far north, Have you caught many yellow tails befor? Gene

daddytime

Thanks for that AWESOME read. Great info and pics, best blue water report in months. Keep up the quality reports and Congrats on the state record.

David Ridenour

Excellent report! Congrats on the record. Crickets and earthworms Ha Ha!