Took a couple of buddies on a shakedown test of the new boat. We left Thursday from Surfside Marina (Surfside Beach, TX) around 2:30 PM. It was my first time using a fuel bladder so when the engines died in ICW I got concerned and came back for a quick diagnosis. It turns out the lines just weren't fully primed up from the new source of fuel.

We made great time with light seas 1-2' no wind all the way out to Tequila Rigs. Caught some bait and headed out to Boomvang. We arrived at Boomvang shortly after dark with no moon rising yet. We caught a box full of blackfin 'til sometime after or close to midnight. We made the decision to try for a sword so we moved off the floaters back into those grounds. Still new at the game we fumbled through the process and as a result no bites were received. I'm looking forward to the Swordfish Seminar in late April.

Towards the early morning the wind and wave chop started to build which didn't look like the forecast I had seen the previous day. I stayed watch from 2:30-5AM and got a 1 hour nap before sunrise.

We trolled the early morning & sunrise with some high speed wahoo lures but scattered seaweed became a pain to deal with and clearing the lines with heavy trolling weights was a task to say the least. We abandoned that idea and made our way to a few tile spots.

This was my first time ever fishing for tile and we had some good success. I have to say many thanks to Troy Day at Short Corner Tackle for helping me out over the last few weeks. The process and equipment you need to use overwhelmed me at first but he quickly got me all setup with the proper gear. I definitely appreciate his assistance and willingness to answer all my questions.

The first 2-3 spots we tried didn't produce anything except one breakoff. We moved to our final spot and within 1 min of touching bottom we had fish on! They were no match for the Hooker Electric or LP both winched them straight up. I really like my LP but the Hooker held her own to and was a beast as well. It may take a few more trips to find which one gets the start each time.

Seas built as we did a number of drifts pulling in 6 golden tiles and the ride home had the 29' World Cat working but she was eating up the seas. We made 28-29 MPH through the 3' seas (maybe a 4' thrown in) and ran up to 34 at cruise in the 1-2's. The boat performed well and I was impressed at what she could handle.

Attached are some photos we took.

Those golden tilefish are DELICIOUS!
I was just working out near nansen and boomvang last week. The Ensco 8506 is drilling not too far from there.

We didn't make it over to Ensco I wanted to but we sacrificed it to try for swords.

There was a metric fuckton of tuna last week. Blacks and yellows. Doesn't mean anything this week though. Hahaha

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Let's see pics of said boat

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Awesome pictures. One of these days im gonna save up and give that a shot. Always looked like fun!

Awesome pics. What depth of water for the swords over there and what depth were the baits. The trips I run in the Atlantic we usually set up around 1500 to 1800ft and baits are 300, 200, and 50. Just wondering if it is the same over there. Are you using a hydroglow or the boat lights? Cyaclumes?

That is a big fucking boat. You living right!

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