Steve
Guru
On Friday Morning May 29 My wife and I loaded our gear and 12 yr old Daschund onto the boat at the slip we rent in Houma, Louisiana. Mile 57 West of harvey lock of the GICW is only a half mile or so down a small canal. Shortly after we turned South into the Houma Navigation Channel the "Houma Nav" swing bridge opened with minimum delay and we proceeded towards the Gulf of Mexico. It is about a 30 mile run passing first through the Houma oilfield port in which several yards*are*quite busy building structures and vessels for the offshore oil industry.* We then passed Dulac, not far from the site of the terrible boat accident in which 5 people lost their lives when their boat crashed into a barge one night about 10 days ago. We had one more bridge there, a pontoon which swung open right away for us. Not much later we passed near Cocodrie and into Terrebonne Bay. We headed to one of the oil field areas in about 10' of water in which there are lots of small wellheads with platforms about 20'X30'. These have been around for quite a while and usually pretty good for fishing Speckled Trout , Redfish, and Flounder. It was about 4:30 PM by the time we were tied up to the structure.* The fish were biting well with a dozen nice keepers in the ice chest when contrary to the forecast the wind picked up and not long after the fish dissapeared. At dark I connected a couple of 500 watt floodlights to try to attract something but still no luck so we turned in for the night. It was a restless night lots of wind and a tidal shift late so I had to retie to a different piling to keep from drifting into the structure.
Saturday morning was beautiful, but the fish still weren't biting. so we headed to Cat Island Pass and out into the Gulf it was quite calm so we cruised out a few miles and tried our lick at some of the platforms out there but still no luck. So we headed in towards the beach of West Timbalier Island where we anchored in about 8' of water and broke out the BBQ pit to grill some cheeseburgers. We relaxed a while when I got ready to raise the anchor the windlass locked up so I had to retrieve it by hand. Since we were in shallow water with minimum scope out it wasn't too bad of a job. We headed back to the bay and another platform where the fishing still wasn't going well. We spent saturday night there catching a few more trout that night. Sunday morning had a nice breakfast then headed back to Houma to attend a Storm Warnings/ Save the Wetlands function being held at the Houma Municipal Marina
park.
I had recently installed a Xantrex Link-lite battery monitor and was happy to see it worked very well, giving a good indication of the amount of power being used and the state of the battery.
We hadn't been out in the boat for about 2 months so it was great to be on the water again even if for a short trip. I haven't been able to trouble shoot the windlass yet maybe I'll be able to do that tomorrow.
Steve
Saturday morning was beautiful, but the fish still weren't biting. so we headed to Cat Island Pass and out into the Gulf it was quite calm so we cruised out a few miles and tried our lick at some of the platforms out there but still no luck. So we headed in towards the beach of West Timbalier Island where we anchored in about 8' of water and broke out the BBQ pit to grill some cheeseburgers. We relaxed a while when I got ready to raise the anchor the windlass locked up so I had to retrieve it by hand. Since we were in shallow water with minimum scope out it wasn't too bad of a job. We headed back to the bay and another platform where the fishing still wasn't going well. We spent saturday night there catching a few more trout that night. Sunday morning had a nice breakfast then headed back to Houma to attend a Storm Warnings/ Save the Wetlands function being held at the Houma Municipal Marina
park.
I had recently installed a Xantrex Link-lite battery monitor and was happy to see it worked very well, giving a good indication of the amount of power being used and the state of the battery.
We hadn't been out in the boat for about 2 months so it was great to be on the water again even if for a short trip. I haven't been able to trouble shoot the windlass yet maybe I'll be able to do that tomorrow.
Steve
