(Originally published November/December 2015)
By Capt. Peace Marvel
Our offshore fishery out of Venice, Louisiana, is unparalleled. There is no other place on the planet where you have a shot at a 200-pound yellowfin on a day trip 365 days a year and 100-pounders or better are consistently caught daily.
One of the main reasons our fishery is so great is because we have about 1,000 oil rigs off our coast in water from 1 foot to 7,000 feet deep, and they pretty much all have fish on them.
Closer to shore, in water to 1,000 feet deep, most of the rigs are attached to the ground. When you get a little deeper, all the rigs are TLPs (tension leg platforms) or floaters. A TLP is a permanent rig, while a floater is a rig that moves from spot to spot in order to do a certain job on a well site. A floater may
