The scales at Venice Marina opened Thursday evening, about a day after Bertha came ashore one parish over. By Saturday the Faux Pas board had a 220.8-pound yellowfin on it. Add a 250.6-pound swordfish, a 6.91-pound speckled trout, and three mangroves over 10 pounds, and the tentative leaderboard from a rodeo that fished through a tropical storm week reads like a normal year. Last Thursday this report told you the weekend was a gift. The board says it was. Here's what else it says, and where this week's window sits.

Most of this week's hard numbers come off the Faux Pas scales, and that's a good sample: four days, three divisions, weighed at Venice Marina in front of witnesses. Outside the rodeo, the docks gave us a clean day-by-day arc from the charter fleet and one very good wade trip. Offshore intel beyond the tournament was thin this week, and we'd rather tell you that than pad it.

Yellowfin. The Outdoor Addicts took the rodeo with that 220.8, backed by a 171 and a 139 on the board, and their tuna-wahoo-dolphin aggregate went 261.2 pounds. A 220-class fish in late July says the big ones never left. This week's shot at them is Thursday or Friday, west wind 10 to 15 and seas around 2 feet, before the weekend builds. Three per person, 27-inch curved fork length, HMS permit on the boat.

Swordfish. Three swords hit the board in a storm-shortened week, and the winner went 250.6 pounds for Salty Nutz. The daytime drop wants flat water, and Thursday and Friday are the flat days on this forecast. If you've been waiting on a sword window, it's early-week this time.

Wahoo and mahi. Modest but real: a 33.2-pound wahoo and a 21-pound dolphin won their categories. The grass lines Bertha rearranged have had a week to set back up, so run the edges on the way out and keep something skirted in the water.

Red snapper. The clock slowed down, and that's the story. LDWF's newest estimate has Louisiana at 659,232 pounds, 74.7 percent of the 882,439-pound private recreational allocation, through July 12. That's 3 points in a week, against the 25-point jump the holiday week put up. Two honest caveats: the estimate runs about two and a half weeks behind real time, so it's likely near 80 percent in real time, and when landings approach the cap, LDWF doesn't give much warning. No closure signal this week. The fish are there and they're big: the rodeo's winning snapper weighed 24 pounds even, and the five-fish stringer went 109.4, an average pushing 22. Four fish, 16-inch minimum, descending device rigged.

Speckled trout. A 6.91-pound trout won the open division, with a 6.87 right behind it, and the winning five-fish stringer went 27.68 pounds. You don't see many near-7s out of Venice in late July, and two of them on one board says the big-trout class rode out the storm just fine. The everyday fishing backed it up. Reel Shot, who you heard plenty from earlier this month, ran a monster day Friday and double limits of trout and reds Saturday, then took a curveball Sunday morning and still got what Capt. Brandon Carter called a base hit. And Harold Wilcox of Harold's Hogwash had the week's most instructive trip Monday: wind blew him off his primary spots, so he put his Indiana crew in the water and waded to a limit of over-20-inch trout on plastics, releasing six or seven more over 20 behind it. Fifteen a day, 13-to-20 slot, no more than two over 20, and on a for-hire trip the crew keeps none.

Redfish. The marsh cleaned up fast. The gauge at Venice was back to a foot and a half Wednesday morning from three and a half at the height of Bertha's push, and the rodeo board shows the slot fish never left: first and second place tied at 8.43 pounds, Double M and PawPaw's Boat, with a 25.06-pound live three-fish stringer and a 16-spot fish taking the spots category. Four a day, 18 to 27 inches, crew keeps none.

Mangroves and the rest. Three mangroves over 10 pounds came off the rigs, a 10.8 on top. Wilcox's crew had snapper eating jigs until the sharks moved in, which is July in a sentence. Mangroves are 10 a day within the 10-snapper aggregate, 12-inch minimum. Flounder stayed quiet, and the board doesn't argue: the winning fish weighed 2.90 pounds. Ten a day if you find them.

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Grade last week's call however you want, but here's the record. This report said skip Thursday, and the Gulf agreed, 6-to-9-foot seas on the day the rodeo's scales opened. It said Friday was the transition, and Reel Shot posted a monster day. It said Saturday and Sunday were the gift, and Saturday was, double limits and the rodeo's flattest scales. Sunday threw the curveball, storms in the morning and a grind after. Call it three out of four, with the miss on the easy one.

The bigger story is what the rodeo itself proved. A field that drew its captains party on landfall day still filled a three-division board inside 72 hours of a named storm clearing the delta. This fishery takes a punch.

And for the first time since Bertha spun up, the Gulf map is clean. The Hurricane Center's Wednesday morning outlook reads "tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 7 days." What's left behind is heat, advisories up Wednesday and a stalled front keeping a storm chance in the forecast every day this week. The weather that matters now is the pop-up kind, not the named kind.

Tails Up Offshore, Capt. Donnie Jackson. The week a 250-pound sword won the rodeo's lagniappe division is the right week to point you at the Venice boat built around that fish. Jackson is a second-generation captain out of Cypress Cove, better than 20 years on this water by his own count, with a USCG Master 50-ton license and a 39-foot Contender called Sea Cruiser running three 425s. In 2021 he won the Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic with a 309.9-pound swordfish that set the Mississippi record, and the daytime sword program is what he's known for. The rest of the card is the full Venice summer: yellowfin, mahi, wahoo, snapper. Takes up to six.

Check dates and pricing. Through Captain Experiences, his extended day runs from $3,200 and the overnight trip from $5,500. Book Tails Up through Captain Experiences

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A wade belt. Watch what Wilcox did Monday: the west wind took his spots away, so he got out of the boat and waded to a limit of big trout. That west wind is forecast all week, and the wading game is how you beat it, working the lee shorelines the boats can't sneak into. The one piece of gear that makes it work is a simple wade belt: a rod holder so you can re-rig with both hands, a pliers sheath, a dry pouch for a spare pack of plastics, and a place to hang your fish. Two notes from the same trip. The sharks that crashed Wilcox's snapper bite are why you don't want a stringer of bleeding trout on your hip, so tow a floating fish bag instead. And shuffle your feet, the rays are in the same skinny water you are. Any of the coastal brands' belts run 30 to 60 dollars and last for years.

The window flipped sides this week, and it's a short one. Thursday and Friday are the days: west wind 10 to 15 knots and seas around 2 feet both days, with a slight storm chance to dodge each morning. Then the door shuts. Saturday and Sunday both run west at 15 to 20 with seas 2 to 4, occasionally 5, and Sunday adds storms through the day. That's the mirror image of last week's shape. Don't save this one for the weekend.

Inshore, the moon is spending down. Wednesday morning's full moon gave Thursday a hard afternoon fall, a 10:59am high dropping most of a foot to a 10:21pm low at Pilottown, and that push weakens every day after: Friday's range is about three quarters of a foot, Sunday's barely a quarter. Fish the falling afternoon water early in the weekend while it still moves. The river is back to its summer low, the water at the mouth is holding 86 to 87 degrees, and the heat is the real hazard: indices ran 110 to 115 Wednesday. Dawn starts, more water than you think, and watch the radar for the afternoon pop-ups.

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The Empire South Pass Tarpon Rodeo starts today. It runs Thursday through Saturday out of Delta Marina in Empire, a leg of the Louisiana Champions Cup, and it's the delta's oldest game, tarpon at the mouth of the river. If you're down this weekend without a trip booked, the scales at a tarpon rodeo are worth the drive up Highway 23.

The groups took care of one of their own. A visiting angler posted that a medical issue was keeping him off his crew's offshore boat, and asked where a man could fish from the bank around Venice. The answers came fast: the culverts along Tidewater Road on a falling tide, the water by the Cypress Cove cleaning station, the cut at the south end by Venice Marina, Joshua's Marina up in Buras, and chicken livers on the river bank for cats. One commenter told him to go watch the tarpon rodeo while he's at it. File that list away, because sooner or later a blown-out day leaves everybody on the bank.

Next billfish date. The Faux Pas board carried exactly one blue marlin tag, by Tenacious. The next swing at them is the New Orleans Invitational, August 20 to 23 out of Cypress Cove, on the Big Game Fishing Club's 2026 schedule.

Know somebody with a fall Venice trip on the calendar, or somebody who fished the Faux Pas? Forward them this one. The board's worth the read and the snapper clock affects everybody's August.

Fish Thursday or Friday if you can swing it. The weekend, sleep in.

Until next Thursday.

Joey

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