VK780 Spirit Platform with Rodney Brewer & Crew on March 18, 2017© Photos Posted by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
This was a trip with Rodney Brewer, his daughter Ashley, and Tristan Horton, all from the Dallas, Texas area. Don Pion from Ocean Springs came along as well and filmed the Drone Footage for us. It was just announced that this was the last weekend to catch Amberjack for the rest of the 2017 year. Therefore we headed for the deep Continental Shelf Oil Platforms. On the way we stopped at 2 Shrimp Boats and bartered for Chum and Shrimp. The first boat gave us a nice bag of Shrimp but was out of cull. The second boat gave us 2 large bags of cull and a gallon of large shrimp tails. We stopped briefly at the East Can and trolled for Wahoo but had no takers and saw little activity. We pushed South and made our first dive stop was at VK780A Spirit in about 720 feet of water, located about 70nm southeast of Pascagoula Mississippi and 10nm north of the Ram Powell Floater Platform. I shot a 62 pound Amberjack here and Rodney opted for an Almaco Jack. After this dive we moved north to the MP281 & MP280 Fields in 310 feet of water. I did some Tropical Fish Videography on MP281. I was not wearing a wetsuit in the 69 degree water and got chilled after about a 30 minute dive and got into some dry clothes and called it quits for the day. We moved over to MP280 and Rodney had already rolled in when I spotted something that looked like a Whale Shark. We cut loose from the Rig to investigate and discovered it was a pair of Manta Rays. We eased back to the Rig and the crew went on their dive. The Manta Rays apparently followed us over and gave the crew a great dive (See the Video). They followed them up to the boat and I almost got in, but I had already put all my dry close on and it was getting late. I'm still upset over my laziness to not get back in and try to experience the Mantas. This was my first ever dive trip with my new GoPro Hero5 Camera that I just got for my Birthday. I was really pleased with the results. I am going to like this Camera. While I got my AJ, they seemed to elude everyone else. Even though we didn't have a great deal of take home meat, we had enough to remember the incredible experience the Gulf of Mexico provided us. The trip encompassed 184 miles, 110 gallons of fuel, and 14 hours.
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