Galveston offshore 7-30-05

26lb SOW Snapper

We (my fiancé, my best man and my self) left Tiki Island at 6:00 on our way to the first stop about 50 miles from the jetties. Got there at about 9:00. Put three keeper snapper in the box but the place turned into a parking lot so we took off for a spot that’s a little more secluded. We caught some nice fish here and managed to boat a nice sow (just under 24lbs) but things turned off after about an hour or so. We moved east and marked a lot of fish on the sounder but couldn’t catch anything so we moved on to the northeast directly into the biggest 2ft or less seas I’ve seen in a long time. When we got to our spot we were all soaked. Krissy caught the last three snapper that we needed for our limit and Jeff caught a nice king. On the way home we stopped at the east rigs and finished off a nice limit of kings. The biggest bottomed out my 30lb scale.

I think that I might need to take a lesson from 2cooler Mike Trautwein. We worked our butt’s off for a limit of snapper. Left early and got home late. Mike leaves after lunch with six guys (three that haven’t snapper fished before) and kicks tail. See post http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=28484


Jeff with the catch. He loves to catch the big kings.


Me with my favorite fishing buddy

Galveston Offshore 8-6-05

Karen and Krissy with there SOW's

We left Tiki Island yesterday at 6:00 with some 2cooler friends from the shark fishing board (T.J. and Karen) to look for snapper and AJ. T.J. and Karen are both avid fishermen so the pressure was on to find fish. The trip started with a bang. There was one thunderstorm in the entire Gulf of Mexico and it had to be off of the end of the jetties sitting exactly where I wanted to go. I had been watching the radar to see which way it was moving so I was confidant when I decided to go around behind it. Wile making my slick move behind the storm another part of it blew up right on top of us. I can handle the washing machine like seas and the torrential down poor but the lightning crashing around us made me a bit nervous. We turned all the electronics off, disconnected them and insured that no one was touching anything that might put them in the line of ground. We survived without incident. The weather was really nice the rest of the day. To bad the fishing wasn’t as good.
I decided to go more towards the south than usual to catch an AJ or two. We marked boat loads of fish on a lot of spots but not many bites. We were running all over the place trying to catch legal snapper and AJ’s. We didn’t quite manage a limit of snapper but we did box three Sows. The only AJ that we managed to get to the boat lost his body to a huge barracuda.
All in all it was a great day with some great folks that I hope come fishing with Krissy and my self again.

Some of T.J.’s posts from the 2coolfishing message board. They are quite impressive.
http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=28605
http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=27937
http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=26642
http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=25383
http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=22620


Me and TJ with some SOW's


The long ride home

The Catch

Galveston Offshore 7-22-05

Krissy with nice fish

My fiancé, a buddy that I work with in Africa and myself left from Tiki island at about 6:00 am heading about 50 miles off shore. In my slow old boat this took about 3 hours. On the way out there was some rain but luckily we hit the holes perfectly. We didn’t have to change course at all. The weather and seas were very good at the first stop. At this stop the first five fish were over 12lbs, then the sharks showed up. There must have been a million of them because we couldn’t catch anything else once they started. We moved to a spot about 5 miles away and finished off our limit of snapper by 11:45. My buddy from work had only been offshore once before so now with a nice limit of snapper an plenty of time to kill I was going to show him how to catch a King fish. To his and my fiancés amusement I missed the first three strikes. We did end up catching a few scoolies then the weather started to move in on us. We were taking fuel at the Galveston yacht basin by 5:00pm.

Me with fish

John with two nice SOW's

Nice limit of Snapper