It Could Be Worse

Hammerhead left Saturday night once again in pursuit of blue water and pelagic predators. On board were your correspondent, Eric Songer, and Ron King. Just as we were leaving the slip, Outta Here was pulling in from an overnight trip flying a blue marlin flag and a white marlin flag. I did not know where they had gone (south of the Ram Powell over in oil rig country) in relation to where we were going (south of the Squiggles in Nowheresville), but their success filled us with a lot of hope and not a little competitive spirit, differences in boat size and crew experience notwithstanding. You can almost see our Great Expectations in this photograph taken by Pete Mitchell from Wayne Lewis' balcony as Hammerhead headed into the Gulf through East Pass.




We wallowed out for ten hours in a nasty 2 to 4 foot beam sea (all the 2s apparently stayed home, leaving the field to the 3s and 4s) looking for the northern edge of a pocket of blue water Roffs showed 65 nm to the south. By the too long delayed dawn of Father's Day, Hammerhead's generator was on the fritz, so there would be no coffee, no AC in the salon and no fans on deck. And most of the hope and all of the competitive spirit had been beaten out of us during the night. But we pushed on to the south looking for the blue water. 75 nm. Nope. 80 nm. Nada. We turned to the north west, dragging our wares in blue-green water that quickly shed the blue and stayed green.


But we found grass. Acres and acres of scattered grass, so much and so scattered it could not be fished. And we found big grass mats that could be fished. And lines of grass, good lines with clean edges that should have held beaucoup mahi, if nothing else. But they didn't hold anything except a smattering of chicken dolphin, a school of hard tails now and again, and infrequent flying fish. We trolled lures. And ballyhoo. We pulled up and tossed jigs. And plugs.


Bupkis. Eight and a half hours of fishing and only one knock down. Not one fish. Skunked for the second time this season, a record of the most dismal sort. If you doubt me, below is a photo of the three of us taken by Mary back at the dock. I am on the right.


But things can always be worse. Seriously. Below are two photos taken from an oil rig crew boat Friday afternoon as it closed in on the source of suspicious smoke seen rising over the horizon 45 nm south of Venice, Louisiana. In the background of the first photo is a flybridge sport fisherman burning to the waterline. In the foreground are four men in life jackets clinging to an ice cooler. The second photo is a closer look at the last moments of the boat, which belonged to the father of one the men. (Nice Father's Day present his son gave him, although I guess his son returning alive and uninjured might have taken a bit of the edge off the pain of losing his boat. But probably not.)

To top things off, the fishermen reported in an email to friends announcing the loss of the boat and their rescue that they too had failed to find blue water or catch a single fish and were on their way home with a skunk in the boat when disaster struck. So I'm thinking we on Hammerhead didn't do too bad after all.