Brandon Picou, along with his son, Parker Picou, his dad, Joel Picou and family friend Timothy Bollinger, made a trip to Venice on May 24, 2025.
“We started the day out about as bad as it can get. My dad forgot to put the plug in the bait well and all of our live shrimp died. We went snapper fishing and my transducer quit working not allowing me to graph any fish.
We were 6 hours into our trip with only a handful of break-offs on big fish around shallow water rigs.
That all changed when I found a section of beach with clear green water and pelicans diving for bait. We fished around for about 30 minutes with only two keeper trout and mostly hardheads.
Everyone was exhausted and the heat felt like it kept getting hotter and hotter on us, knowing that my crew was exhausted and ready to head in, I told them ‘I know there’s trout here somewhere, I just need to find them. Give me 30 more minutes and if I cant find them we can go.’
I got on the trolling motor and started looking for where I thought the fish would be. I found a section of submerged pilings and rocks and on my first cast I hooked up. The fish came out the water shaking her head immediately and I told the group “‘big trout, get the net.’ The first fish went 24 inches. After this, I preceded to hookup with giant trout over 23 inches on every cast. We had gone from rags to riches in a matter of 30 minutes!
Knowing how rare this was these days, I told my son Parker to get on the rod. He caught three nice jumbos over 23 inches consecutively. The cork bite slowed down, so I jumped back on the jig bite. I found more big trout piled up along the edge of another set of adjacent rocks within casting distance. After I caught one jumbo trout on this other spot, I handed the rod to my son. Parker hooks up with what appears to be a very large fish. We could not tell what was on the other end, but by looking at the rod and the drag stripping, we knew it was something large. This rod was spooled with 12-pound mono! Then the fish jumps out the water about 4 feet into the air!! I yell ‘TARPON!’ The fish made several runs, one under the boat, one towards the trolling motor, then jumped again right next to the boat. Parker handled the tarpon on the 12-pound test like a true pro. I netted the fish, and the whole boat had a huge sigh of relief because we all know that tarpon are not easy to land. Especially on 12-pound test!
I could not help myself, and continued to make more casts, continuing to hook up on JUMBO 5-pound or 6-pound plus trout. My dad hooked up on a very nice fish that went over 24 inches. All jumbos were released to fight another day. Truly the trout fishing trip of a lifetime!