Starting to plan a deep sea trip with a fellow Ag and really have no reasonable restrictions on departure port, target species, or time of year, given enough advance notice, but just want to maximize the fun. Anyone had great experiences they'd recommend for a multiple night deep sea trip?

Venice, EOT. Give me an idea of what species you would like to target, and I'll do my best to narrow down a time and boat/captain. Unless you really mean any port, then i'd head to Costa Rica and go slay the billfish.

Budget? That's really the biggest factor.

Budget of a successful professional.

Intrigued by costs rica billfish if you actually catch fish.

Jan-Apr at Los Suenos is always fun. World class sport fishing boats, excellent scenery, and not hard to get to. But it's not cheap.

Costa Rica

or captain John Cole out of Venice

poolct00 said:

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Costa Rica

or captain John Cole out of Venice

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Cole is a certified bad ass captain. He does overnight charter too, can put you on tuna during the day, billfish if they are around, and then deep drop for Swords overnight. His Invincible boat is first class, just not the big 65 Hatteras or Viking if thats what you are after.

Captain Chris "Heavy" Helveston - Voodoo Charters Venice Louisiana.

If staying local Oilfield Outkasts - Freeport.

Cabo

Fished the Bill Collector II three days last week out of Cabo. 9 striped marlin caught and released and 10 tuna up to 120 pounds. The big tuna were caught on a kite in the middle of school of easily 500+ porpoises.

Venice, Costa Rica, and Panama (Tropic Star Lodge) are on my list, so i can't weight in on those. But you can't go wrong with Cabo and the Pisces fleet.

We would have had more if it weren't for a severe case of sea sickness by one of our party causing a shortened day. The other 2.5 days were phenomenal and they put us on fish every day.

Tropic Star in January for Black Marlin. They have the best access to Pinas Bay.

Schall 02 said:

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Budget of a successful professional.

Intrigued by costs rica billfish if you actually catch fish.

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Costa Rica or Panama then.

If you are the DIY type at all, a 3-4 day trip out of San Diego for bluefin is a lot of fun. Nice boat like the Royal Polaris. Prime rib dinners, etc but you bring your own gear or rent it from the tackle shops. The tuna fishing blows away anything in Venice. Here's a write up I did on a 4 day trip.

Left Coast Tuna | TexAgs

Just fished Venice with golong charters, gray long. 11 tuna, 16 snapper. Gray always busts his ass. Highly recommend.

Highly considering fishing with Pisces for my batchelor party in Cabo. Thanks for the review!

Highly recommend the TopShape out of Kona Hawaii. Great stable boat and recently added new hi tech sonar. Caught all of my marlin with them. 9 total days with them over 3 different vacations to the Big Island.

Plus highly recommend the Big Island for vacations. Still plenty to do and see after 3 separate trips.

Cant believe nobody has recommended Luiza Nelson yet

El Jefe charters out of Costa Rica

Is cabo or Costa Rica better ??

Thanks all. Keep em coming. I'd probably lean CR, all things considered.

I have fished offshore Texas (multiple ports), Venice, Hatteras, Biloxi, Destin, Key West, Ft. Pierce, , St. Thomas, St. John, Playa Del Carmen, Aruba, Kona, Costa Rica, and Cabo. Still have Panama (Tropic Star Lodge), Cairns Australia, Fiji, San Diego. and Madeira Portugal on my bucket list. I have caught six billfish species: Atlantic Blue Marlin, White Marlin, Sailfish, Swordfish, Striped Marlin, and Pacific Blue Marlin. Also have landed lots of other pelagic species, including several tuna species, dolphin (dorado), wahoo, mackerels. I still hope to land a Black Marlin and a spearfish. IMO Quepos, Costa Rica would be a great choice.

haydland said:

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El Jefe charters out of Costa Rica

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Would you say he catches a plethora of fishes?

Username checks out.

Cabo Blanco, Peru. Never been, just it holds the Marlin record and Hemingway spent time there.

Yep. Forgot Cabo Blanco Peru. Need to add it to my list.

One thing to decide upon first is the style of fishing, trolling, casting, jigging, etc. That can very much determine your port, also if you want to bring home fish or just catch and release. Also do you want to be pampered with nice cooked meals and a lodge or just fish with more DYI.

We fished with Eddie in Venice last year for wahoo and tuna and my crew hated wahoo fishing. Its all trolling and they were just super bored. You have long periods of nothing and then 15-30 minutes of action.

We are flying out to AK Saturday for a 32 hour halibut trip for BIG buts. I've done 36 hour tuna trips in the GOM, but 4-8 hours on deck in 40-50s with rain will be different. Very different than other blue water fishing trips, but its an option.

My boys and I fished with them our 1 and only trip to Costa Rica
Several sails and more dorado than we knew what to do with. Awesome captain and staff.

If your buddies hated trolling for wahoo in the gulf they are really gonna hate dropping for big halibut. Half the time you don't even know that you've hooked a flounder then you crank the stupid 3lb fish and 6lb of weights up 500ft so you can rebait and send it back down. Boring frustrating and exhausting. In the rain. Halibut is delicious though!

Ogre09 said:

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haydland said:

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El Jefe charters out of Costa Rica

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Would you say he catches a plethora of fishes?

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That's El Guapo

We've all halibut fished before. I think its more about doing something, even if it sucks to crank up heavy lead to check bait, whereas trolling you are just sitting there half ass napping.

This outfitter has two speed 30s, so it shouldn't be too bad. My first trip many moons ago was using old crappy 9/0. Not fun when all the old people caught one fish and then when in the cabin to eat and drink and told the younger ones to finish out the limit. It was a company charter and we had the full boat and I was a sorta new hire so I "got" to keep fishing. Man I just wanted a beer and a sandwich towards the end of that trip.