Deploying the Depth Finder | Big Fish, Texas

Hey guys, now let's get up and go. Okay, got to cut some bait out. We're at the East Butterfly right now; it's 130 miles from Galveston jetty. We have 13,000 pounds of grouper to catch, and that's a tall task for anybody.

Got to say, I'm very tired. I drove late last night, and I didn't get here till 5 in the morning. No, I really don't smell it; it’s a ruin from the time we wake up. It's about 30 minutes until we're setting our gear. Come on, we're burning daylight, baby!

Longline fishing for grouper, we use a depth-finding machine to find the fish. It shows us a picture of the bottom that’s constantly getting replayed as you're moving, so you target your fish. I'll start driving the boat, and as soon as I rev up that engine, they know it's time to throw the buoys in the water, and we start setting.

Grab the line! Hey, we'll have two buoys connecting to each end of the gear. We might set five, five-minute sets, and I'll have John and Iser. They're my gear setters; they're baiting hooks and clipping them on as fast as they can go. Stack them hooks on; we’ve got to catch some fish there!

All right, closer the better. You want more hooks in the water; the hooks ain't doing you no good sitting on the deck. All right, it's better. Those two guys that aren't setting the gear, they get the barrels ready. They're out there cleaning the boat, making sure the guys in the back are good, making sure they got plenty of bait to keep everything rolling. You know they stay busy the whole time.

We're going to put all that mono in the water today; ain't going to be no extra mainline left. A lot of longline boats, they only have 8 to maybe 15 miles at the most, whereas I have 25 to 27 miles. They might set both their gear out in the morning, but then they got to haul that one back and then set it back out, haul the other one up, and then set it back out. By the time they do that, it’s already late afternoon or night.

I'm able to stick all my gear in the water first in the morning, and generally, the grouper, they bite in the morning, so that's why I do so much better. But because we run so much more gear than everybody else, I need my guys on top of their game.