Last Thursday, one day after this report promised you the Invitational board "the week the club posts it," Charlie Caplinger at the New Orleans Big Game Fishing Club emailed the official results to us before they'd gone anywhere else. As of this morning the club's site and the Champions Cup pages still show nothing for 2026. So you're reading it here first: 16 blue marlin and 4 white marlin released, a 182-pound yellowfin on the scale, and a shrimp boil a hundred miles offshore. Also in here: the Gulf grew a named storm two days after we said it was clear, and the last snapper window of the year opens Friday at 12:01.

Red snapper. The second window stands exactly as LDWF wrote it: 12:01 a.m. Friday, September 4, through 11:59 p.m. Monday, September 7, four fish per person, 16 inch minimum, private boats and state-permitted charters only. Federally permitted charter boats are done for the year. One number we can't give you: how much quota the first window ate. LDWF's landings table still ends August 9, so last week's 35,109 pounds was the number going into round one, not what's left today. Friday is the sure thing and Monday is the hope. Mangroves stay the filler behind them, 12 inches, ten per person inside the ten-snapper aggregate.

Yellowfin tuna. The only verified tuna numbers this week are two weeks old and official: the Invitational fleet tagged 16 yellowfin and weighed 15, a club record for tagged fish, with Brett Davis's 182-pounder on Miss Paula V at the top and a 127 and an 87 behind it. Tuna Town Fishing's August 18 post, which is an operator selling fall trips, says September through November is prime and the fish are "beginning to show in better numbers." Nobody's posted a dated box since, so this weekend is the first real read on the fall run.

Swordfish. Bite Me Sportfishing's Capt. Bernie Frueh, who runs out of Cypress Cove, posted Monday that "the sword fish bite keeps getting better." That's the first swordfish signal we've had from a working boat in a month. 47 inches lower jaw to fork, one per person, four per boat, and every one gets reported.

Redfish and bass. Mike Frenette, of Redfish Lodge of Louisiana, told Louisiana Sportsman this week what the low river does downriver: "We can sit in one spot and whack bass, redfish and flounder without moving. I've caught as many as eight species in one day." His program: flipping the canes from Baptiste Collette down through Pass a Loutre and South Pass. With the Venice gage still under two feet, that's the marsh you'll find. The other signal is the calendar. Guides in the groups are selling September dates as bull red time, and Capt. Owen Langridge's line from a 2024 Louisiana Sportsman piece still holds: September is the month for bulls, out in the big bays. Slot's four fish, 18 to 27 inches, and every bull goes back.

Speckled trout. Reel Shot again, and yes, six issues running, so one sentence: "rough to be a speckled trout" Friday, a full box Saturday. Fifteen at 13 inches, two over 20.

Amberjack. Open since Tuesday, one per person at 34 inches of fork, federal waters through 12:01 a.m. October 14. Rene's Rigs was shipping amberjack rigs to Cypress Cove Marina and B&B the week before the opener, which is the closest thing to a dock report we have. Nobody's posted an AJ from the first two days yet.

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Here's the board. Second Wind, Capt. Marlin Brown, released four blue marlin and two whites over the three fishing days for 2,400 points and first place, and her crew represents the club at the Offshore World Championship in Costa Rica next year. Charlie Burt on Second Wind was top angler with three blues. Miss Paula V took second on two blues, ahead of Crystal's two on time, and Kimmi was top outboard with two blues and three yellowfin. Beth Fisackerly's 58-pound tuna on Good Stuf won the ladies' award, Louis Rodrigue on Foam O was top youth, Corey Free's 36-pound wahoo on Foam O took that category, and Tenacious swept dolphin with a 36 and a 26. Behind the 182 in tuna: Hunter Cazas at 127 on Kimmi and Marshall Barnes at 87 on Relentless Pursuit. Honky Voodoo got the hard luck award, and the optional Calcutta paid Kimmi and Crystal $8,955 apiece.

Ten boats released fish, from Second Wind's six down to single blues on Relentless Pursuit, Tenacious and Escape, plus a white tagged and released by the three-generation Housey crew on the Eugenie. Somewhere in that table is the boat Councilman Jurisich was posting from last week. The club's read on the water: light seas, scattered storms, "a few rare riplines that were fishy." And the one hint they'll give you about where Second Wind found them: she burned less fuel than the rest of the fleet.

The detail I keep coming back to has nothing to do with the scale. Seabrook Marine and SeaKeeper Ride put a Yeti LoadOut bucket on every boat, plumbed with a water line so the crew could boil shrimp underway. Tournament chair Jimmy Fisackerly and chair-elect Burden Edmonds cooked up the idea, and the fleet ran shrimp boils a hundred miles out. The club has ten spares at $125 if you ask nicely.

Now the part we owe you. Last Thursday this report said there was nothing in the Gulf. Friday evening a cluster of storms in the northern Gulf started organizing, Saturday it was an invest, and Monday morning the Hurricane Center was writing advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Five about a hundred miles southwest of Southwest Pass. It got the name Edouard that afternoon and went ashore at Johnson Bayou Tuesday at 60 mph. The delta's share was an east wind: Thursday and Friday of the snapper window were the flat days we printed, Saturday blew 12 to 16, and Sunday ran 10 to 20 out of the east at the pass, gusts past 23. Not the foot-or-less weekend we sold you. The September lesson is the one Dad's been repeating since I was a kid: a system born in the Gulf gives you two days' notice, not ten, so a four-day snapper plan needs a bail-out day built in.

One more we got wrong, smaller. Last week we said the state gag season runs to December 31 inside nine miles. It doesn't. LDWF aligned state waters to the federal date back in June, so gag closes at 11:59 p.m. September 30 everywhere; the finfish table that still says December 31 is stale. The advice was right, the fine print wasn't. The rest of the fall calendar: dove opens Saturday in the South Zone through September 20, teal is September 19 through 27 at six a day, the shrimp trawls have been working the inside since August 17, amberjack closes October 14, flounder possession stops October 15. The dates say fall. The water, 87 degrees for a fourth straight week, says July.

Intensity Offshore Outfitters, Capt. Josh Bodenheimer. The outfit brands itself Tuna Town Fishing, runs out of Cypress Cove, the same dock the Invitational weighed at, and its owner was born and raised in Metairie, which is a sentence I'm biased toward. Bodenheimer started as a deckhand on Venice offshore boats at 19, founded the operation in 2010, and runs a four-captain roster now, so you're booking the outfit as much as the man. The offshore boat is a 2022 42-foot Razorcat with four 350 Suzukis and a head; the full day is 10 to 12 hours for up to six anglers by their own count. They also keep two houseboats inside Venice Marina at $400 a night for up to six, which solves an out-of-towner's lodging in one call. On price, do the math before you pick a door: Captain Experiences lists the offshore day from $4,588, 100 percent on two reviews, while the outfit's own site quotes $2,400 plus fuel and says fuel runs 200 to 300 gallons a day. Direct is 504-235-5319.

Fall tuna, from Cypress Cove: Book Intensity Offshore through Captain Experiences

(We earn a small commission if you book through this link, at no extra cost to you. It keeps this report free.)

A heavy spinning outfit for the bull-red bays. September fills the big bays with 20 to 40 pound reds and every one goes back, so the whole game is a short fight and a clean release. Most inshore boxes down here are built around 2500 and 3000 size trout reels with 15 pound braid, and a 35-pound red on that outfit is a 20 minute fight that half kills the fish. Step up to a 5000 or 6000 class reel, 50 to 65 pound braid, and a 7 to 7 and a half foot medium-heavy rod. The same outfit throws a 3-ounce Carolina rig at the near rigs during the snapper window and handles the jack that eats your snapper bait. Figure $150 to $250 for a combo that'll last years. It's a drag-and-line problem, not a skill problem, and it's the cheapest thing you can do for a fish you're putting back.

The forecast is last week's, and this time there's nothing behind it. NWS Slidell has northeast wind 5 to 10 knots today, seas a foot or less nearshore and around 2 feet past 20 miles, then about 5 knots every day Friday through Sunday, a foot or less in both zones. The longer-range discussion hedges to 1 to 2 feet, puts storm chances at 50 to 60 percent, mostly mornings Friday and Saturday, and flags Sunday afternoon for the strongest downburst risk of the window. No advisories. And the Hurricane Center's Wednesday outlook says no formation expected for seven days, which is the sentence we didn't have last week.

The tide finally moves. Pilottown swings 1.4 feet Friday, 1.5 Saturday and Sunday, 1.4 Monday, the biggest ranges in a month, and every day runs the same way: one high before dawn that slides later each morning, then a fall through the whole afternoon. The last quarter moon lands at 2:51 a.m. Friday, opening morning. The river's up a little, 1.7 feet at Venice against 1.2 a week ago, still low and green, and Southwest Pass water dipped to 86 under Edouard's clouds before settling back at 87.

Read it this way: offshore, all four days are runnable, so put the long run on Friday or Saturday, be off the water Sunday afternoon, and treat Monday as the bonus. Inshore, fish the falling water from first light to mid afternoon, drains and bay points, and the bulls in the big bays. The limit is heat, with the heat risk index hitting major by Saturday, so water, shade, early.

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The Empire swing bridge got fixed before we told you it was broken. The parish posted Monday, August 24, that the Hwy 11 bridge was back open to vehicles and boats. We printed "no all-clear as of Tuesday" three days later, because we were watching the councilman's feed instead of the parish's own notice page. Bridge is fine. Our checklist wasn't; it is now.

The club's season ends this weekend, in the snapper window. NOBGFC's Closing Season Tournament, the Labor Day one, runs Friday and Saturday, September 4 and 5, per the club's 2026 schedule. Charlie also told us the club's red snapper Calcutta is a members-only pot that runs until that tournament closes the season, so the boats fishing the same four-day window you are have money riding on it. If you're at the near rigs Friday morning, you'll have company.

Another paddler is coming. Last week it was a canoe from Montana. This week the Bayou State group shared a Baton Rouge TV story about a 19-year-old paddling 2,400 miles of the Mississippi to the Gulf, due at the passes around Sunday, with the same question as last time: who's got a boat to run him back up to Venice? Same answer. Somebody down there always does.

If you fish the window, hit reply and tell me two things: what the near rigs looked like at first light Friday, and whether the box was full by ten. And if you know anybody who fished the Invitational, forward them this one. The board's theirs.

Joey

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