Did A Little Fishing

Hey Guys,
Son, Grandson, Future FIL, and I went on a Fantastic guided Bull Redfish (Red Drum) 3 day fishing trip out of Venice LA. Venice is located at the end of the road along the Mississippi River as it enters the Gulf. Our fishing was located in some protected area of the Gulf the first day since the wind was 15-20 and the other two days was in the open Gulf which was more like a Mill Pond. All of the fish caught were from 18-35# the 35# being the largest of the 50+ caught. All were caught on light spinning tackle using artificial lures. Also all the fish were released!!! Because of their large size they are not as good eating as the very plentiful 5-10# Reds are. Besides it also gives others a chance to catch the big ones.
For those that have never caught a Big Bull Red, well let me tell you they wake up pissed off and DO NOT like to have a hook in their mouth and put up a real fight when that happens :wink:
For those that may be interested here is where we stayed.
http://www.woodlandplantation.com/activities/fishing/

Son and I had a double of 20+ Pounders.


Old Guy with a nice one. Notice how calm the Gulf is


This was my largest of the trip. 28# Gulf is like glass.

I believe I would coat them with Prudhommes seasonings and blacken them on my grandma's old cast iron pan outdoors on the propane grill so I don't smoke out the house. Then I would take a bottle of ranch dressing and add 1/4 cup of Choluha hot sauce to it, slice up some lemons and dive in to that drum yum yum.

Looks like a grand time for sure.
How do they compare to a King Salmon of equal size for fight?
Nice pictures!

Terry

Hi,

Nice fish, Jim! When you said light spinning tackle, how light is light?

Rick C

That looks like a load of FUN! I have caught a few reds on some trips out of Florida and they are a blast.

Rick Courtright said:

Hi,

Nice fish, Jim! When you said light spinning tackle, how light is light?

Rick C

Click to expand...

Rick,
In the pictures you can almost see the size of the rod and reels. It is hard to say the size, but it isn't what you would expect for a big hard fighting fish like a Red. The need for light tackle weight rig is you are casting all of the time. So heavy stuff would just ware you out in no time. I spent a lot of time in the past catching big offshore fish and I was VERY impressed with the abuse that these modern rods could take. Yes one did break but the line which was 50# braided test and it never broke. Most of the time the rods were bent 180 degrees.
I will try and get some of the action pictures from Trey and post later

Beautiful fish! And Jim is right, red fish are strong fighters. The slot limit here is between 16" and 26" with one fish can be larger. The big ones like Jim caught are not good eating and are really the breeding stock.