Report submitted by 'Oz'

Nyati Offshore Report North Padre Island, TX July 18-19th, 2009 Tweet

Please visit our Sponsors

Coming off some hot offshore action as of late, the Nyati and its crew are ready for another adventure. The seas are looking decent with a slight chance of rain and it's a go. YT organized another last minute trip and Mickey, Nate, Nate's brother Jacob, Garrett, and I would join YT and VRC for another great outting. YT also invited Sean, another avid offshore angler to join in on the fun.

We break the jetties around 6pm and cruise on out deep. Come sunrise we get out to one of our familiar locations to see several other sportfishers fishing the POCO (invitational) tournament. Random blowups of Tuna can be seen on the surface, but things are pretty quiet. After an hour or two we get our first hook-up. A fish came in the spread and hit the flat-line.

Garrett hops in the chair and is ready for a morning workout

After a few minutes we get the fish under the boat but it doesn't want to come up

Shortly after Nate leaders the fish up and I get the bill

It is a good look'in Blue Marlin with a big appetite

Garrett jumps in for a quick pic

We get lines back out. Within an hour we have a knock down from a big fish in the spread

Jacob hops in the chair to do battle with his first Marlin... and a battle it will be.

By the time he gets strapped in and ready, he has to start his war with less than a half of spool on the 80W and quickly disappearing..

Shortly after Jacob gets the fish closer and closer to the boat and we are excited and prepping

Our first gimpse ofthe beast coming up we realize she is a bit larger than expected

This is a very healty, large girthed Marlin, larger than any other we've encountered yet

The fish goes back down for a couple minutes and Nate tries to get her back up with the leader. He finally succeeds and the fish is starting to wear out. I am up on the Tuna tower taking pics while Nate and Sean take care of business on the deck.

The fish is finally subdued and we get several more quick pics before the release. Here are the pics and I'll let them do the explaining.

After the pics, we are able to successfully release this beautiful Blue Marlin which by any standards, would have been a tournament fish and wacked and brought back to the dock. We have seen MANY Marlin and I'm not going to make any guess on the weight of this fish. In this particular instance this past weekend it could very well have been worth several hundred thousand clams. Congrats to Jacob and a fish of a lifetime in the Gulf! She is swimming in the deep blue awaiting us next year!

We get lines back out and things have slowed down. After a couple hours we pick up a small 'hoo which gets iced down (and grilled for dinner later on).

The rest of the day remains quite slow. The fish have lock-jaw and the pressure is dropping. A front is stalling out to the north and the fish are going deep. We troll til sundown with very little action.

Nate cooks up some badass blackened Wahoo for dinner and we engulf it. Great job Nate! Just relaxing we have a bunch of fish come in the lights and scoop up some specimens playing around while they cleanup the mess and the George Foreman grill. He is a grander Mahi...

We re-organize and try to put some Tuna in the box. Fishing is pretty slow and little surface action other than random Blackfin. Mickey is able to save the day and jigs up a Yellowfin.

That would be it for the YF action. There would be some random blowups by fish which we thought may have been Yellows but were just grander Blackfin like this one falling for a topwater.

Sean gets in on the action with a top-water Tuna of his own...

We would switch to chumming and chunking cut baits. Strangely enough nothing appeared. I finally get hooked up but it wasn't a Tuna, it was a.... Tripletail????

Come sunrise the bite remains slow. We live-bait and troll around for a whilebut it just isn't working. With some storms brewing, we decide to head closer inshore to see if we can find some fish. We pick up and VRC takes a couple cool pics.

On the way in we come across a Whale up on the surface.
(ID Please?? Thinking it may be a Sei)

We get back inshore a bit and troll a couple more hours with a couple small knockdowns. We pack it up and decide to head for home. Before we do YT and Nate get Jacob down on the deck and ambush him into the water for his Marlin dunking.

Here are a few photos in sequence...

Jacob gets back up and with his big Marlin and all, is happy as a clam for the ride home!

Closing in on the jetties Garrett flys a few flags of the fish we did get.

It was another fantastic journey aboard the Nyati. The fish variety and quantity wasn't as impressive as the past couple of trips but we did land and release our largest Marlin thus far. That alone makes the trip priceless.Thanks to YT for having us on another great adventure on the open ocean.

Til the next weather window..
- Oz and crew

POST your comments about this Report in the EC FORUMS!!

[BACK to Reports]