# 54909: Subject: Gom, Alabama

Submitted by capt_dalton (ip 199.254.206.4)

• Fished on 3/31/2006

• Report received: 4/3/2006

Water Temperature: 69 - 72
Water Clarity: Crystal clear in 130 feet
Seas: 2 to 4 Friday 1 to 2 Sat
Weather: Friday, SE wind 10 to 12, seas 2 to 4, air temp in the upper 70's

Sat, slight southerly breeze, seas 1 to 2, air temp in the lower 80's
Fishing_for: Tuna, AJ, Grouper, Beeliners, Triggerfish
Boat: Mar-T
captain: Chris Dalton & Steve Trawick

Report:
Friday, March 31 thru Saturday, April 1 overnight GOM trip aboard the Mar-T

For most of the week leading to our overnighter, the forecast looked pretty decent, but, Friday morning the 64 mile buoy was reporting higher than comfortable seas with 4 to 5 footers at fairly short intervals. However, we had Bob Trawick, Bob and Fred in from out of town and the forecast was calling for things to settle out as the weekend progressed. Local captain and diver Nathan Friedlander rounded out the crew and Capt. Steve Trawick served as second captain with Luke Ball handling the deck duties. The call was made at 10 a.m. to make a go of it. After all, if it was too bad, we could always turn around and come home.

We left Dauphin Island Marina a little after noon Friday and made a hasty run to the Petronis platform to see if we could find a tuna bite. Due to our late departure, we didn’t try to stop for any live bait on the way out. Ballyhoo, diamond jigs, lipped plugs and cedar plugs were the only ammunition we had to start with, but, it proved plenty effective. As the sun set, the first two tuna to hit the deck. Two fat blackfin fell for a cedar plug and a Yozuri Hydro Mag Minnow. The fish marked well on the Furuno 582, so we decided to change tactics and began dropping diamond jigs with good success.

We checked out the Marlin rig later Friday night but it showed no signs of life up top or on the bottom machine. We spent the rest of the night chunking and jigging around the Neptune rig waiting for morning to come and holding high hopes of a yellowfin turn on. It didn’t happen. We trolled from 5:00 until nearly 9 with two more fat blackfin to show.

We pointed the Mar-T north to hit some deepwater rigs for AJ and grouper. On our first stop, “Diamond” Bob Trawick connected quickly when a 25# AJ chomped on his diamond jig. A couple drops later gave us a shark and a couple of fish releasing themselves at boat side. That’s when the real fun began. Capt. Steve was at the helm and reported non responsive steering. Not a good thing when you are 50 some odd miles offshore. I went below deck and pumped the hydraulic steering to 25 pounds, but, it only lasted a minute or two and was back to 0. We had a steering line leak somewhere. It was located at the stern at the manifold between the rudders. A copper feed line had ruptured at a flared fitting. Of course, we had no flaring tool or any compression fittings on the boat. I started a slow course to the north throttle steering, while Steve, Luke and Fred worked to fix the ruptured tubing. With a little ingenuity and some duct tape, we soon had some steering back. It was way better than nothing.

We made a couple more stops for bottom fish and added three scamp to the box along with a mix of beeliners, white snapper and triggerfish.

I hate that the group didn’t get to fish for more AJs and grouper, but our steering issue cost us two hours.

No one seemed disappointed when we were back at dock and the entire catch weighed out at 491 pounds.

I had a good time watching some guys catch tuna that had never even been offshore fishing and Capt. Steve and Luke we great to work with. We have agreed that we’ll run future overnighters together.

Give a call or drop me an email if you would like to take a trip on the Mar-T. We can sleep 5 comfortably on the overnighters. Snapper season opens Friday, April 21st. We run trips from 8 hours on up.

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