Venice Louisiana Yellowfin Tuna Fishing: Trawlers and Rigs

Venice Louisiana yellowfin tuna fishing is a structure fishery. Through the summer, boats live chum oil platforms and floating rigs for yellowfin in the 40 to 80 lb class. In the fall, from about September through November, the bigger fish, often 100 to 200 lb, ride the shrimp trawlers working 20 to 30 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River. Chunking and chumming catches both.

We filmed this fishery in both seasons with Captain Josh Howard, summer on the rigs and fall on the trawlers, and nobody I have watched does this better. This is how the Venice program changes from one season to the next, and where his experience runs against what you will read elsewhere.

If you are newer to the species, start with our yellowfin tuna fishing tips for offshore anglers. This page is about how the fish behave off Venice.

Why does Venice hold so many yellowfin tuna?

Venice sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where nutrient-rich river water, thousands of oil and gas platforms and a working shrimp fleet all concentrate bait within easy access. Yellowfin hold on that structure most of the year, which is why Venice is one of the most consistent yellowfin fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Howard's daily fishery is structure: fixed oil platforms, floating platforms in 5,000 ft of water, drill ships and some natural bottom. Trawlers are mostly a fall program for him, but he checks one any time he crosses it, because a five-minute detour can turn into the best bite of the week. It can also turn into nothing; at other times of year he has checked 20 trawlers in two weeks without a fish. The runs are short, 20 to 25 miles to the summer rigs and 20 to 30 miles to the fall trawlers. What changes with the season is which structure holds the fish.

When is yellowfin season in Venice, Louisiana?

Charter captains will tell you Venice yellowfin fishing is year-round, and it is. The pattern changes, though. Oil platforms and floating rigs carry the fishery from late spring through summer, live bait and chunks do most of the work, and the shrimp trawlers take over in the fall, when the biggest yellowfin of the year show up.

Summer on the rigs

In mid-May the rig bait (bigeye scad, hardtail, threadfin and tinker mackerel) is not mature yet, and Howard expects full swing three or four weeks later. Summer fish run 40 to 80 lb; our filming day topped out at 103 lb, and friends of his caught a 180 and a 191 that week. July through September is the best stretch for poppers.

Fall on the trawlers

The fish move onto the trawlers in August or September, October is the strongest month, November is still good, and the timing varies by year. Most fall fish are 100 to 200 lb. Bait gets scarce offshore in the fall, and a trawler throwing bycatch all day is an easy meal.

How do you chunk and chum a shrimp trawler for yellowfin?

Trawlers cull their catch and dump bycatch over the side, and yellowfin hold behind and beneath the boat to feed on it. The standard approach is to set up off the trawler, keep a steady chum line of bycatch or thawed bait going, and drift a hidden-hook bait back into the slick where the tuna are feeding.

Howard's rule is to become the shrimp boat. One person does nothing but chum, two or three pieces a couple of times a minute, so the slick never breaks. Bycatch floats, and so do frozen pogies, so he brings two or three flats as a backup. Most of his bycatch comes from trading with the trawler crews, who will toss a sack across when you pull up.

Pick the bait the bonito can't eat

Bonito and blackfin eat almost anything that hits the water before a yellowfin can get to it, so Howard picks the biggest bycatch for hook baits: a 12 in white trout, a ribbonfish, a flounder. He waits until he sees a yellowfin in the slick, strips 10 to 20 ft of line, and throws the bait in front of that fish.

The best dock talk from that day: picture the boiling bonito as a shadow on the water. The yellowfin often sit on the outside perimeter of that shadow, so Howard pitches a live hardtail or mullet outside it rather than into the middle. Away from the trawlers, the same approach works on a roaming school, covered in our article on chunking yellowfin tuna in open water.

Which shrimp trawlers are worth checking?

Look for trawlers working clean water in moderate depth, with bycatch going over the side and marks on the sounder under the boat. Most captains check several boats in a morning and move on quickly from a trawler that shows only bonito and blackfin, because the yellowfin will often be on the next one.

Howard's sweet spot is a trawler in 200 to 300 ft, though he has caught fish from 70 to 400 ft. A boat in 50 ft of dirty, cold water is not worth the stop. He wants clean water at 70 to 80 F, and sees far fewer fish as it drops toward 60 F near the river. Fronts help: they push mullet offshore, and the yellowfin follow them in close and onto the trawlers.

Where the common advice breaks

You will read that the morning cull is the peak window. Howard sees the bite heat up from around noon into the evening, with crews tending to dump nets around 10 or 11 a.m., so recheck the boats you passed in the morning. The best moment to hook a big fish is when the trawler pulls its nets.

You will also read that a fresh boat beats a pressured one. In Howard's experience, a trawler just in from Texas or Florida will not hold fish for hours. The longer a boat has been throwing bycatch, the more fish it draws.

Stay clear of the cables

An anchored trawler is the safest to fish. A moving trawler drags two cables to the bottom, a fish hooked close behind it will often wrap one, and the current can pull you into the trawler if you set up too close.

How do you fish the oil rigs for yellowfin in summer?

On the rigs, Venice captains set up on the up-current side of the platform, chum with live bait or chunks so the slick drifts back to the structure, and fish live baits or hidden-hook chunks in that slick. Pogies, hardtail, threadfin and bigeye scad are the standard baits, depending on what is available that week.

Howard fishes the up-current side nine times out of ten. When he is not sure which side that is, he scrolls the sounder down to 200 to 300 ft, circles the rig close, and lets the bait piled up on the up-current side show him. A friend of his once fished a rig 50 degrees off for an hour. Slack current makes it hard to get bit, and too much makes presentation hard.

Pogies come from the delta with a cast net; turn the electronics off, because the transducers spook them. They die quickly in blue water, so the short run is what keeps them alive. Our breakdown of how fishing structure holds bait and predators explains why the rigs hold fish.

Live chumming the prop wash

Howard bumps the boat in gear to make white water from the props and dumps 10 to 20 baits into it. The baits hide in the white water, then sit exposed as it dissipates, and the tuna come up for them. With no live bait, 1.5 to 2 in cubes of bonito or blackfin do the same job, with the hook pushed inside a slit and run back 200 to 300 ft.

Poppers on the rigs

When yellowfin feed on the surface under birds, Howard reaches for a popper on spinning tackle. He carries a swimming popper, the Frenzy Angry Popper, which does not float, and floating poppers that splash and sit, the Russell Lure and the OTI Sea Dragon and Wombat, which he steps up to for fish over 60 lb. He runs one of each and switches to whichever gets bit.

Does the moon affect the Venice yellowfin bite?

Many Gulf of Mexico captains plan trips around the moon, and a full moon often gets the blame for a slow daytime bite. In Venice, whether the moon matters depends on which structure you are fishing, the rigs in summer or the shrimp trawlers in the fall, because the two programs behave differently.

On the rigs, Howard avoids the full moon and a day or two either side; the bite may not turn on until midday, while a new moon gets the fish active. August is the exception, when he catches fish every day regardless.

On the trawlers he sees no trend at all. The fall we filmed had just come off a full moon with fish caught everywhere. A steady supply of bycatch matters more to those fish than the moon, and clean water matters most.

Venice yellowfin tackle, leader and drag

Venice captains fish fluorocarbon leaders and circle hooks for yellowfin, and they size both to the season. Summer fish on the rigs get lighter leaders and smaller hooks; fall fish on the trawlers get the heaviest leader they will eat, because the fish run bigger and the trawler fish are less leader-shy.

Howard starts the fall with 25 to 30 ft of fluorocarbon tied straight to the braid, and changes it once it wears below about 10 ft. His case for the heavy leader goes beyond landing the fish: the shorter the fight, the better the meat. Hook choice has its own article, on tuna hook size for live bait, chunks, lures and jigs.

The internet's rule of 30% of breaking strength is overkill at strike, in his view. He sets about 15 lb so the hook goes in without a break-off on the first run, then adds drag as the fish settles: no more than 25 to 30 lb on 80 lb fluorocarbon, and up to 40 lb on 130 lb or heavier.

What do you do when a big yellowfin won't eat?

The usual fix for a leader-shy yellowfin is to drop leader size and hook size until the fish eats, and to hide the hook inside the bait. In Venice that works, but Howard has found that bait size often matters more than either, especially when the biggest fish in the slick keeps swimming past your hook bait.

A 196 lb fall yellowfin refused Howard's bait on 130 lb fluorocarbon over and over. He dropped to 80 lb and a softball-size chunk of red meat with the hook hidden inside, free-falling on the clicker with no drag. The fish ate it.

On another day the fish ignored big baits until he went smaller on a 7/0, and then ate on both 80 and 130 lb leader. Bait size mattered more than line size. He puts both leaders out and counts strikes: five on the 80 to one on the 130, and everything goes to 80. And if the yellowfin eat every free bait but not the hooked one, they are seeing something. Drop a hook or leader size.

Fighting and gaffing a big Venice yellowfin

A yellowfin fight is a battle, not a sprint. Howard coaches short pumps of one or two feet and never a high stick, because the fish is always trying to point its head down and dig. On big trawler fish, a harness lets the angler fight with body weight instead of arms.

At the boat he prefers a belly gaff, which keeps the gaff out of the loins. Do not gaff a big yellowfin deep; he has been pulled overboard doing it. Kill and bleed the fish right away to keep the meat from heating up.

Questions About Venice Yellowfin Tuna Fishing

Choosing Rigs or Trawlers for Venice Yellowfin

Venice rewards the angler who knows which program the season calls for. Summer means rigs, live bait, the up-current side and an eye on the moon. Fall means trawlers, the biggest bycatch in the bucket, clean water over 70 F and an afternoon bite that ignores the moon.

To see how the same species is fished on dolphin schools, birds and bait balls in other fisheries, browse our yellowfin tuna fishing videos.

For a completely different approach to the same fish, our article on fishing yellowfin tuna on porpoise and dolphin schools covers the Costa Rica pattern.

Seth Horne Founder and CEO