Scott sent me a recap of their day offshore on Sunday.

Another Good Offshore Trip - Ray (601), his son Esai, and I left Conn Brown aboard the "Luna-Sea" (Ray's Blue Wave) on Sunday morning at 6:00 am for a day in the Gulf.  The weather prediction was 1 foot seas, five seconds apart.  That equates to smoooooth water.  But mother nature gave us something a little different.  We cleared the jetties at 6:15 am to rough choppy water.  After running several miles it was still rough and as the sun rose we could see we were in 2' seas about 2 seconds apart and they were coming at us from several directions.  We had to slow down to 12 to 14 mph to keep from knocking all of the screws loose.  We slowly made a 35 mile run to a batch of rigs approximately 25 miles from shore in about 130' of water.  Eventually the water laid down to being almost slick but the first several hours it was rough!  At the first set of rigs we fished for dog snapper but could not get any to the boat.  We were able to land 4 Strawberry Grouper.  They are a beautiful and tasty fish.  We had several larger fish take us into the rig and break off the line.  The real excitement for the morning was our impromptu engine repair.  The small tiller on the lower unit that sits directly above the prop had come lose and somehow spun around 180 degrees to the point that it jammed against the prop.  It had the prop completely locked up.  If anything on a boat will break it will happen while you are offshore.  So there we were . . . 25 miles from shore . . . 35 miles from the Port A jetties, with a very nice 250 HP four stroke Suzuki engine . . . that we could not use.  So Ray jumped in the water and hanging on the lower unit was able to break the prop free using a 20 oz bank sinker as a hammer.  This took about 30 minutes of trying various techniques before it broke free.  He then wired the tiller in place using a 12" long piece of 240# wire leader.  Ray is now known as "MacGyver" Luna.  Problem solved and we were off to do more fishing.  But I've got to tell you, that was scary for a little while.  There were other boats around and we could have hailed them or called the Coast Guard via a satellite device called a SPOT, but that would have wrecked the day and made for a VERY long boat ride back to shore.  After the motor issue was solved and we spent a little more time fishing the deeper water rigs we headed closer to shore in search of our "State Water" Red Snapper.  Just inside state waters (within 9 nautical miles from shore) we found a rig holding some nice sized snapper.  These rigs were a long ways up the coast from Port A.  You have to run far to find rigs with any decent sized snapper.  Most rigs closer to the Port A jetties have been too heavily fished.  After a few break-offs and a little chumming we got the feeding frenzy going.  Within 45 minutes we caught our limit of 4 per person (12 total fish).  Esai was a trooper and reeled in almost every one.  And some of those were large, strong fighting fish.  This was his first hard core, long day of offshore fishing and he did great.  We had several opportunities at Ling but could not get one hooked well enough to bring them to the boat.  In retrospect it was another great trip.  No one got hurt.  Everyone returned safely to shore.  Good memories were made and many fish were caught.  Thanks to Ray and Esai for letting me go with them on the adventure.