Tuna Fishing at the Midnight Lump, 2003

On February 1, 2003 myself, David Twitty, David Bryant and Danny Keiner took off for Venice La., to do some Yellow Fin Tuna Fishing. We had tried to make a tuna fishing trip last year in February but due to boat problems never got to wet a hook. This year was different as you can tell by the pictures below. The weather was great and the seas were calm. That Gulf Stream water is some of the prettiest blue water I have ever seen. It was also about 20 degrees warmer than the fresh water in the Mississippi River we motored down to get to the Midnight Lump, South West of Venice La. I'm here to tell you that Tuna Fish are some fighting fish!

Danny is holding the BIG FISH of the trip in this picture, all 107 pounds of him. We had all caught several Black Fin Tuna and everyone except Danny had caught a Yellow Fin by noon. We were waiting for Danny to catch his Yellow Fin when he hooked up with this bad boy. After fighting this fish for over two hours Danny handed the rod off and we all took a couple of turns winding on the reel before Danny was refreshed enough to take the rod back and land the beast... All in all we were hooked up on this fish for right at 3 hours before we could get him in the boat.

Heres David Twitty and David Bryant with another nice Yellow Fin Tuna in the 50 to 60 pound range. Sure are Pretty fish!

Another shot of Danny with his big fish on the scales back at the dock. Looks kind of happy doesn't he?

And here is a shot of all of us with our one day catch. We felt like we had been in a car wreak. Those tuna really made us work for our catch. Front row, left to right, Danny - Keith Back row, David Bryant - David Twitty