With some days marked tentative for fishing on our calendars, we watched the forecasts and jumped on the opportunity when we saw some of our open dates match a 1-2' sea forecast.  With the boat already in OB, we were ready to roll and planned to fish two days.   We had the good fortune to be joined by Lucious, a relatively new Burgess recruit. While Lucious had done the inshore stuff quite a bit, this would be his first offshore trip. 

Day 1- SUN 5/21 - Forecast was spot on.  With a ROFF's in hand, decided to head offshore to the Spur to fish some blue water & temp breaks.  On the way out, we saw plenty of porpoise, turtles, and even a pod of whales.  We took this as a good sign since it was lucky for Lucious to have the opportunity to see such creatures on his first offshore trip.  With scattered grass about, we were sure hoping to find a weedline to coincide with the blue h20.  We had just had our electronics serviced, but we soon found we still didn't have radar, and our autopilot wasn't cooperating either.  So, in addition to having hitch & tralier wiring issues, we now are now complete - problems with boat & tralier too. Back to the fishing, we found the blue water, and found a strong frothy rip with scattered weeds, but a little colder water than we expected.  We trolled a couple miles each way up & down, and even right in the weeds, but could catch anything other than the weeds.  No knock downs, no fish.  We pushed on out to find the purer h20 with higher temps.  We found beautiful water and good temps, 78 and change, so lines out.  Different h20, but again, no fish. With the day nearly gone, we decided to pick up and run back in a ways and fish some bottom spots in the yellow gravel area.  Despite having good bait, the fish just really weren't cooperating.  Sam managed a nice king off the bottom, and a couple mangrove snapper (HOF - 1st of species).  

Day 2 - MON 5/22 - With a new day, we hoped for better luck.  We decided to introduce Lucious to Mr. AJ at the 50 miles rigs.  Seas were still 1-2', so at >30 mph, off we went.  We caught a lot of bait before leaving the pass, so we decided to try some bottom spots on the way out.  Although we were reading bottom on the way out at cruising speed, when we came off plane, we soon realized out bottom machine wasn't cooperating again even though we had just spent $$$ the week before having it fixed.  Seems the oil bath had leaked again.  We decided to continue on per our original plan to fish the rigs. 

A couple miles short of the rig we spotted a large crate adrift.  With thoughts of dolphin, we rigged up and headed over.  Surprisingly, we only saw a couple fish suspended.  Tom threw a white leadhead jig, let it sink below the crate, and bang, got hit hard.  However, after a short run, the line went slack. The sharp teeth of a king or wahoo made easy work of the monofilament. Shortly, Lucious landed his first ever dolphin, and a fair fish at that.  Tom followed it shortly with a very nice one at boatside on live bait, his largest dolphin to date.  While debating the merits of leaving it in the h20 to hold fish, eventually it released itself. With no more fish around, we decided to head on over to the rigs for some action. 

Once at the rig, we jigged to no avail, Mr. AJ wasn't home.  While jigging, we spotted lots of bait action, and schools of large Jack Crevalle.  We rigged up some casting roads with large popping plugs, and after 30 mins or so of top water casting, a few busting fish but no sustained hook ups, Tom finally hooks up.  Figting a large jack crevalle on a spinning rod ended up not being so much fun when it went deep and spiralled.  After 30 mins or so, Tom finally brought the fish on board.  At 22 lbs, it was Tom & $$'s first ever JC, so welcome to HOF again. 

Realizing we were burning precious daylight, we decided to move on out.  We went farther out to one of our favorite tuna rigs.  Deployed a large spread, but same story as the day before.  No fish.  The water temp was 82, but we were in green h20.  We trolled several hours.  Saw lots of bait busting, but no tuna or wahoo.  Lucious did land our largest Barracuda to date, a HOF 15-20 lb'r, but not a target species.  With the day waning, we decided to head towards home.

We stopped at the Unocal, a cutoff rig, abandoned years ago.  This is the home of big AJ's and plenty of remaining rig structure for hang ups and break offs.  Lucious finally met the beast!  We never dropped without a bite.  We'd get pulled to the gunnels, and then broken off nearly every drop.  In between, Lucious landed a few barely legal AJ's.  Tom never caught an AJ, but hauled up a half dozen scamp grouper in the 4-5 lb. range (HOF  for largest of species).  Running out of line, leaders, weights, & bait, energy, and daylight, we finally called it a day and headed in.  With smooth seas and daylight rapidly coming to a close, and being leary of coming in at dark w/no radar, we throttled hard and headed N.  A spectacular sunset closed the curtains on Lucious' first offshore adventure.  Hopefully he'll volunteer again.