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Was able to sneak away for a few days last weekend and hop on a 60hr trip aboard the Big E out of Freeport TX.  Started boarding the boat around 5am and pushed away from the dock around 6am.  The weather heading out was great, little to no wind and seas that were laying throughout the day.  After a few hours of running, we stopped at a weather buoy to make bait.  We caught a few hardtails and other jacks, put them in the bait tanks and moved on.  Stopped at a couple shallow rigs to pick up a bit more and then headed out to the tuna grounds.  We arrived at the first rig, The Magnolia, around 7pm and immediately saw good sized tuna breaking the surface right next to the rig spars.  The first couple people to let lures flight were hooked up quickly, mostly just blackfin though.  The wind was light and drifts were slow, so after moving about a mile off the rig, we repositioned tight to the rig.  We did this for the next few hours and steadily began picking away at the yellowfin.  The light wind actually hurt the action, we were just behind the full moon so it was very bright and without much chop on the water, the fish were not as eager to come to the surface and feed.  It seemed that one or two YFT would be caught on each drift, some on jigs, some on flying fish, some on stickbaits and poppers.  I managed to pick up my first around midnight on a popper.  We bounced around to a couple other rigs to try and find a hot bite, but no luck, so back to the Magnolia for gray light.  The wind started picking up and so did the action.  About an hour prior to day break, the oceans lit up with flying fish and the YFT were right behind them.  I hooked into what ended up being my largest of the trip at 110lbs just prior to sun up.  This fish kicked my ass!  I hooked into it on the same popper, on a 8'6" popping rod and spinning real loaded with 65lb braid.  After multiple rod handoffs and about an hour, the fish was finally gaffed.  I was exhausted and that was about it for my fishing for the evening/day as it was about 630am and I hadn't slept since about 10am the day before.

Woke up Saturday around noon and we were back in shallower water, fishing rigs in about 350 to 500ft for amberjacks and grouper.  I was still a little sore and tired from the all-nighter so I pretty much just hung out, caught bait and proceeded to kill a case of beer watching others.  I also figured I would try and save some energy for the coming nights tuna fishing…bad idea!  We get back to the tuna grounds that evening and the wind had come back and was blowing hard out of the southeast.  This put a lot of chop on the water, was quickly building the seas and made the boat drift at about 3knts!!  That nights tuna fishing was very slow, with only about 5 or 6 YFT landed all night. 

Sunday morning was even more windy, and bumpy.  We made our way back towards port stopping at rigs and high spots along the way.  A few amberjack, dorado, yellowedge groupers, a ton of vermilion snappers and the largest scamp I have ever seen were caught.  Everyone was in fairly good spirits at this point and around noon we pointed towards Freeport and made the 5 hour bumpy run back in.  It was another great trip and I cannot wait to get back out there.  Here are a couple pics from trip.

110lb YFT

My 110lb fish looking small next to the biggest of the trip that went 132lb

Jack Waldrop with a 30lb+ Scamp.  By far the biggest any of us had ever seen!

and one last one showing the size of the loins that were coming off the tuna!

Balancing your time out there is tough…and the drive back home can be even more difficult on Sunday night.  I am not sure on the exact weight of all the fish I brought home, but it was enough to completely fill a 120qt cooler, and another 80qt cooler.  Besides the 2 YFT, I also kept about a dozen vermilion snapper, 7 or 8 blackfin tuna, a small grouper and a small AJ.  Countless other fish were released to swim another day as well.  After catching the two YFT I realized there was not much point in keeping, and therefore having to clean, a bunch of other stuff that most likely would just sit in the freezer for too long.