These guides have figured out the best techniques for catching the five most-popular species in Louisiana’s offshore waters.
Coming home empty-handed from an offshore trip is like digging a well but never finding water — the hard work can’t be justified. So anyone worth his salt wants to show up back at the dock with his fish box brimming with snapper, tuna, grouper, amberjack and cobia.
Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.
But some boats always seem to return with fish.
What’s the big secret to these consistent success?
We asked some of Louisiana’s top charter captains to share their top techniques with us.
Tuna
Capt. James Peters is a tuna nut, but he was hard-pressed to narrow down the one tactic that he would consistently use to put fish in the boat.
“Do you want my favorite technique or the most-effective tactic?” the owner of Venice’s Osprey Charters asked.
What he’d rather do is catch brute tuna on topwater poppers, but he admitted that’s probably not the most effective course of action.
“A 100-pound tuna on a spinning rod is tough,” Peters said. “It works, but it’s probably not the best way to catch them.”
However, he’s mastered the use of kites for snagging tuna.
“That really is one of the most-effective ways to consistently catch tuna,” Peters said.
The theory behind the method is simple — you let out a waterproof kite rigged with a special clip, through which your main fishing line runs before ending in a back-hooked baitfish.
The kite, which is connected to a special rod and reel, is drifted back from the boat, and the bait is suspended so that it just barely stays in the water.
That’s it. Nothing to it.
Yeah, right.
Peters said patience is required to learn all the ins and outs, but he offered a few tips to help novices get started.
First, use the proper baitfish.
Although Peters admits to resorting from time to time to live mullets or even pogies, hardtails are really where the action is.
“They’re the most aggressive, and they’re the hardiest,” he explained. “You need something hardy on the kite.”
That’s because the baitfish will be dangling in and out of the water, and less-hardy fish will simply give up and die.
Hardtails, on the other hand, are like a good old Timex — they take a licking and keep on ticking.
“You want to create a commotion on the surface, and that’s what a hardtail does,” Peters said.
Cicero mackerel also make good baits, but Peters said they don’t last as long.
“They’re not as tough,” he said. “You put a hook in the back of a hardtail, and if he’s lively, he’ll kick for three hours.”
Another good option is to use flying fish.
“If you have a live flying fish, you’re the most-effective captain in the Gulf,” Peters said. “It’s the creme de la creme.”
But live flying fish are hard to come by.
“The best way I’ve found to catch flying fish is to have a quartering sea, with 3- to 4-foot waves, when there’s a lot of flying fish out,” Peters said. “I spent all night once holding a dip net like a lacrosse net, and I caught seven flying fish.”
So he’s moved to buying frozen flying fish.
“It’s a little more expensive (than other bait), but it’s very effective,” Peters said.
The wings are simply pulled out, and the bait is hooked to a circle hook.
Fishing flying fish (either live or frozen) differs from other baits, however.
With hardtails, mullet, pogies and cicero mackerel, the goal is to allow the fish only enough line to reach the water’s surface. The fish will fight to get under the surface, creating a disturbance that tuna can’t resist.
Flying fish, however, should be held higher.
“You want to keep them out of the water most of the time, letting them skip off the top like a real flying fish,” Peters explained. “If you get that flying fish to come within 30 yards of a fish, something’s coming after it.”
Bait size also is a consideration.
“Usually, the smaller baits work better,” he said.
The reason is simple.
“If you get a bait that’s too big, it’s heavy and it can be hard to keep the kite up,” he said.
Besides, tuna often are feeding on small bait.
But Peters said you don’t want to just pop out a kite and start fishing.
“It’s best to find out where they’re coming up,” he said. “You set up upcurrent of that area, and then drift through the fish.”
When a strike occurs and the main line is snatched from the kite clip, there is a lot of slack to deal with.
“You’ve got just about 100 feet of slack running to the water, so … I’ll start reeling like crazy to get all that slack out of the line before the fish decides to spit the hook,” Peters said.
But he doesn’t pull the rod out of the holder, yet.
“It just steadies everything,” he said. “If you’re standing there reeling, you can make a mistake and, maybe, bow at the wrong time.”
Peters recommends using circle hooks, although he admits most other kite anglers use straight hooks.
“They say they get better hookups with those straight hooks,” he said. “But once you get them hooked with a circle hook, you’ve got them.”
The hook, which Peters normally attaches to a 15-inch 100-pound mono or fluorocarbon leader tied to 80- to 100-pound braid, is pushed through the baitfish’s back so that it hangs level.
“You don’t want the hook to impede the fish’s movements,” he said.
But there are disadvantages to fishing kites.
“It’s kind of hard to cover ground with a kite,” Peters said.
Also, there are a lot of elements to worry about.
“It’s takes time. It’s frustrating,” he said. “It’s a downrigger times three; downrigging is easy compared to a kite.”
But Peters said all the fuss and frustrations are worth it when a triple-digit yellowfin busts a baitfish dangling behind the boat.
“You can see the (baitfish), so when you see them pick up the pace, you know there’s something under them,” he said.
And a 100-pound tuna puts on quite a topwater show.
Getting rigged to kite fish isn’t extravagantly expensive, as offshore fishing goes.
The rod can be found for about $150, and a good AFCO kite that includes interchangeable spars to allow for different wind conditions can be had for $150 to $200.
Dolphin
Dolphin are a dime a dozen around a rip, but catching the bulls can be an exercise in persistence.
That’s because the smaller fish will swarm baits, often beating their larger brethren to the proverbial punch.
“They’ll hit anything. They’re one of the easiest fish to catch,” Capt. Scott Avanzino of Paradise Outfitters said.
So when Avanzino wants to add mahi-mahi to his customers’ catch, he doesn’t mess around.
“The best way would be to troll naked and skirted ballyhoo,” he said.
Skirt color doesn’t really seem to matter, he said.
“Anything with a lot of contrast,” Avanzino said. “Hot pink/white, black/purple, whatever.”
He sets out a standard six-line spread, and drags the ballyhoo around rips, buoys, floating debris and rigs.
“Pull them about 7 or 8 knots, and you won’t get any smaller ones,” Avanzino said. “The big ones are the only ones that can catch up to the ballyhoo.”
In addition to the trolled baits, Avanzino also likes to keep one on a spinning rod.
“You can pitch it to fish that you see while you’re trolling,” he said.
Many dolphin anglers will pull a hooked fish to the boat, but leave it in the water, knowing that other fish from the school will be swarming around it.
Avanzino doesn’t worry about that.
“Not if I’m targeting big dolphin, unless there’s a bunch of fish with it,” he said.
Although heavy tackle isn’t necessary, Avanzino said he’s usually rigged up with 80-pound line.
“Most of the time we’re pulling baits for marlin, and catching bull dolphin along the way,” he said. “But if you’re going to target dolphin, 50-pound line is fine.
“We’ve caught them with line as light as 20 pounds.”
Amberjack
These hard-fighting fish are a favorite of the offshore masochist, and Capt. Marion Tucker said there’s no better way to catch AJs than to put out live hardtails.
Although some anglers hold to the bigger-is-better theory, Tucker said he prefers hardtails that measure less than 7 inches.
“I like the small ones,” he said. “I don’t like those big old things.”
Tucker said he prefers rigs in at least 350 of water, which he said tend to hold more AJs.
But he takes a different tact than many captains, who circle a rig while watching the fish-finder.
“I just give it a whiffle and go for it,” he said.
But he doesn’t tie off to the rig, preferring instead to keep the engines running to help anglers land their fish.
He also doesn’t always pull into the upcurrent side, as many captains do.
“I don’t think it matters that much,” he said.
Tucker simply picks a side, pulls right off the rig and orders lines dropped.
The hardtails, back-hooked with 12/0 or 16/0 circle hooks, are dragged downward by standard Carolina rigs with weights just heavy enough to pull them down.
“You don’t need that much weight if you go on the upcurrent side,” Tucker said.
He normally starts fishing high in the water column.
“I want to be in 350 feet of water, but we only drop baits to about 100 feet,” he said. “They’re usually going to be about a third of the way down.”
Normally it doesn’t take long to find out if there are AJs in the area.
If nothing bites in a few minutes, lines are hauled in and the process starts over again on another area of the rig.
Once a fish is on, the first order of business is to keep it out of the rig. That’s why Tucker never ties off.
“The whole thing is to keep them out of the rig,” he said. “You know the first place they’re going to go.”
So he guns the engines, and drags the fish away from the line-snapping structure.
To help muscle the beast to boatside, anglers fish with 80-pound line spooled on 4/0 and 6/0 reels.
On a good rig, it doesn’t take long to limit out.
“You can only keep one per person,” he said.
Cobia
Lemonfish add some pizazz to an offshore trip, mainly because they often can be sight-fished as they cruise the surface.
Jigs and flat-lined dead bait can nab these fish, but what if there aren’t any cobia on the surface?
Capt. Clark Trosclair has that all figured out.
“Live mullet or catfish,” said the owner Sea Creature Fishing Charters. “That’s the best.”
And he’s not talking tiny specimens.
“If I’m after big ones, I have no problem putting on an 11- to 12-inch mullet, and the same pretty much goes for catfish,” Trosclair said.
Mullet are easiest to deal with, since they don’t have any barbs, but Trosclair said he disarms every catfish he places in his livewell.
“I definitely clip the horns of,” he said. “It helps the anglers, and it also makes it a lot easier for the fish to take it in.”
There are two different ways to use the live bait.
Trosclair’s preference is to free-line the bait.
“I’ll just let the fish swim down to the bottom,” he said. “That way, they’ll pretty much tell you at what depth the cobia are going to be at.”
Flat lines also allow the bait to be pitched to cruising lemons.
“If I’m fishing just for cobia, I’ll have several flat lines out so if I see one, I can pitch out a catfish or mullet,” Trosclair said.
But if he wants to get the bait down quicker, he’ll use a standard Carolina rig with a weight ranging form 4 to 8 ounces, depending upon the current.
“If I know there’s fish in an area, I’ll go ahead and drop down,” Trosclair said.
In either case, he lip-hooks the baitfish with 12/0 to 13/0 circle hooks.
He matches that with 50-pound line, although the fish can be landed with lighter line.
“Most of the time, though, I use 50-pound line,” Trosclair said.
There really isn’t a depth requirement, but pretty water is almost a must.
“If you’re going to catch any amount of them, the water is going to have to be pretty clean,” he explained.
And while he catches ling around the larger rigs, Trosclair would rather target them around the smaller satellite rigs.
“I find the satellites hold a few more fish because fewer people are fishing them,” he said.
Red Snapper
Snapper fishing isn’t rocket science, but there are some tricks of the trade to up the odds of catching sows.
Capt. Frank Hardison, of Charlie Hardison & Sons, said the first concern is leader.
“We use long leaders, and when I say long leaders, I mean anywhere from 28 to 30 inches,” Hardison said. “Sometimes it’s longer than that.”
That’s because the water around the productive rigs generally is quite clear, and that makes stealth critical.
“What happens when you get into that clean water is those fish can certainly see any weight or swivel, so you want to get it as far away from the bait as possible,” Hardison said.
That being said, the leader material is heavier than the main line.
Hardison said his captains use 80-pound main line for the most part, but sometimes drop to 50 pounds.
Leaders are a stout 100-pound mono.
“When you’re fishing close to those rigs, you need something that can stand up to the abrasion,” he explained.
The 11/0 circle hook is baited with a whole pogie, or perhaps strips of hardtails or other baitfish captured while on the water.
The best, however, is pinfish.
“If we catch a pinfish, we’ll hook it right under the dorsal fin and drop it right down,” Hardison said.
But he doesn’t like simply picking any open spot on the boat and opening the reel.
“We go to the bow of the boat, away from everybody else,” he said.
And then he pays very close attention to how far down his bait falls.
The standard practice is to pull line out, counting the number of pulls.
“When you’ve got a little, short guy like me, the average pull is about 2 feet,” Hardison chuckled.
His bait drops about 40 or 50 pulls, which puts it about 80 feet below the surface.
“We start high in the water column,” Hardison said. “You don’t bottom fish to catch the big sow snapper.”
After engaging a reel, Hardison recommends placing it in a rod holder and leaving it alone.
“We’ll let it sit 10 or 15 minutes, watching it,” he said. “Pretty soon, you’ll see the tip bend, and you’ve got a sow snapper on.”
Holding a rod increases the odds that the fish will get away.
“The whole thing is not to have somebody holding the rod and ripping the hook out of the fish’s mouth,” Hardison said. “We let them catch themselves most of the time.”
For more information, call Capt. James Peters at (504) 834-7097, Capt. Frank Hardison at (888) 463-4747, Capt. Scott Avanzino at (504) 818-2176, Capt. Marion Tucker at (504) 837-4947 or (504) 451-3181 or Capt. Clark Trosclair at (985) 563-2531.
