Derek’s Fishing Adventures: Chasing the Bonito

Today I am fishing with my friend Nathan.  We are going out at San Luis Pass.  This is going to be an exciting trip because we are in a 16 ft. boat with a 20 hp motor.  It has a 3 gallon tank and a 5 gallon spare.  It is kinda crazy, but you know it’s always an adventure.

We head out and are on our way to the rigs, which are 7 miles out.  Today we are not going too far since we are in a small boat that doesn’t hold much gas.  We made it three quarters of the way and couldn’t see the rigs.  There were others in the distance, so we decided to drive to those.  They ended up being seventeen miles away from the ramp at San Luis Pass.  This is crazy, I have to admit, but we did it.

On the way out, I spotted a tripletail floating and tried to catch it.  I hooked it and it came off.

Continuing on our way we started seeing birds working. We ran over to them, chasing them for an hour.  I was throwing a lure called a voodoo shrimp. I pulled in a Bonito, this is a very oily fish and has a strong fishy flavor, perfect for shark bait so I kept it. We were still chasing birds.  I was about to make my next cast, but did not realize my lure hooked the rod behind me.  I went to cast and it bent the rod and broke it.

We made it to a rig and the first fish I caught was a catfish.  After that I dropped back down and caught a 3 ft. shark.  It was hard getting the hook out since I had no pliers.  I used my fingers to remove the hook, which is definitely dangerous and I don’t recommend it.  I had to get him off the line.  We couldn’t leave a live shark in the boat.  Nathan was fishing and broke some sharks off at the rig.  We fished another rig and didn’t get any more fish. 

We left and decided to chase Bonito again and Nathan caught one.  Nathan also caught a spade fish, they look like an angel fish but they have two dorsal fins unlike the angel fish that has one.  After chasing for forty-five minutes, we decided to head back to shore.  We knew the wind was going to start blowing, but it hit us sooner than we thought on the way back. Basically, we were 10 miles away and we got super wet the entire time. The waves were 2-3 feet. We had to go against the wind and current for 1½ hours. When we got to the bridge, we had less than a gallon of gas left. On the way we almost speared a couple of waves.  They were big and we were lucky we made it in.  It was sure a lot of fun.  THROW IT OUT, POP IT IN, FISH ON !!!