Venice Fishing: There is a new Sheriff in town

One of my favorite things to do is go fishing. One of my favorite places in the world to fish is out of Venice, LA. It is the fishing capitol of the World. Ok that is a lofty boast but let me set the stage of how it all got started.

If you have read some of my other posts you know I spend a lot of time in Panama City Beach. I have a buddy who has family there and one time we decided to go deep sea fishing and have been hooked ever since.

We started out with the Chaos.

Now we have the Knot Chux…. It’s a way bigger boat.

Our maiden voyage out of Venice was interesting to say the least.

The first day we get a late start as Chuk is having a professional go over every inch of the boat. We go out to what’s known as Seven Mile Rig and do very little fishing as it is already getting dark.

Right about the time we are headed back both main navigation screens cut off. We had to drive with the old school compass.

I was able to take a navigation heading of the start of the channel before the screens cut all the way off. We had just enough light left of the day to make it to the channel and navigated the rest in the dark which is about 30 miles.

 

We made it in and got home in time to cook chicken fried steaks and potatoes. After that long of a day, it was great.

We get up bright and early and get on the boat. As soon as we start heading out we notice the navigation screens are both still out and then we lose the radio. As we are headed out of the channel we are speculating what the issue could be.

To us it seems like the alternator is out or going out. This is what provides power to the entire boat. We think that we may just be running on straight batteries. If that is the case the day will be shot and we will have to turn back.

 

There is one last place before we get out of the pass. It is called Port Eads.

They have a little bit of everything there and I ask for a voltage meter to test if we are getting voltage back to the batteries. Underneath there are three batteries that are run in parallel. As I am testing the voltage I notice the middle battery is much lower than the other two. We get a pair of plyers and I am able to disconnect just that battery. Bam everything comes back online. That one battery went bad and was pulling the power down off everything else.

Now we are back in business and start heading out hitting our spots but this was not the last crazy thing that happened to us.

We start with finding some bait fish at the furthest buoy. We catch a mess of hardtails which is Chuk’s favorite bait.

We get out and right off the bat we bust the nicest wahoo I have ever seen. My cousin Tracy got it with a topwater popper. What a beautiful fish and one of the most amazing I have ever got a chance to eat more on that later.

Right after that we get a nice triple tail as we noticed a school of them swimming around a small buoy.

We have a pretty decent day of fishing but it was mostly figuring out the boat. My favorite part is the boat has an auto pilot. One of the problems I have when driving a boat is if you leave the helm, you drift off course pretty quick. Now I can set it to go straight and slow which give me more opportunity to help out when we have a fish on or something else needs more attention.

As it is getting dark and we start going back in I have been looking at the Nav and notice there are a couple sets of tracks of where this boat has previously been. It is one of the features of this system. The direction we are coming in if we go this way it will shave off almost an hour of our trip time. So we decide to go for it.

With the help of Chuk and Tracy as spotters we navigated a small channel in almost pitch black by using just the nav tracks and the little bit of occasional lights. I will be honest, I was driving a very expensive boat for the first time that day, I was going through a part of the pass that none of us have ever been before, it was about as dark as you can get and all of this was my idea. I was, needless to say, a little nervous but I never let stress get in the way of a good time.

We navigated through there like we owned it. We started out pretty slow doing maybe five to ten mph and once I got more comfortable with the nav I got us up to 30 plus. Mostly I ran about 20 which is pretty fast in a boat.

I am adding a few more pics just because it was such a fun trip.

     

If you ever want to go fishing we aren’t a charter service and we love to fish. If you can provide your own accommodations and are willing to split costs we may have room for you.