Reel Shot's Capt. Jon Carter posted double limits for his crew Tuesday afternoon, his second double-limit day in five, with a standing-room-only Monday in between. Every one of those trips went out in the west wind everybody spent last week cussing. Now the wind's done. Thursday's forecast reads southeast around 5 knots, seas a foot or less, and it never gets worse than about 2 feet through Sunday. The tropics are quiet, the afternoon tide pulls harder every day into the weekend, and the river's already sitting at fall lows. Last week the fleet ground it out. This week gets handed to you.

Speckled trout. Last Thursday we told you about Harold Wilcox wading a limit of big trout with his visiting Indiana crew. Turns out that was day one. Over three days the same crew put more than a hundred trout in the box, and one visiting angler broke his personal best three times: a 4.6-pounder Monday, a 5.4 Wednesday, then a 25.5-inch, 6.2-pound fish less than an hour later. All on plastics, and by Wilcox's count they released only one trout under 13 inches all trip. Reel Shot, yes, them again, had trout in every one of those double-limit boxes; when one boat posts the receipts daily, you use them. One honest counterpoint from the same dock: a commenter fishing that same Monday called it a slow day and all small fish, so the marsh isn't handing it out evenly. Fifteen a day, 13-to-20-inch slot, no more than two over 20, and the crew keeps none on a for-hire trip.

Redfish. The other half of those double limits, Friday and again Tuesday, with what Carter called a nice mixed box in some stiff winds between them. Venice Guide Service had it going Monday too: "Good day fishing today. The weather wasn't too hot and they bit!" The water's helping too; the river story below is why. Four a day, 18-to-27-inch slot, captain and crew keep none.

Red snapper. The clock sped back up. LDWF's newest estimate has private boats at 701,302 pounds through July 19, which is 79.5 percent of the 882,439-pound annual allocation. That's 4.8 points in one week, after the post-holiday week burned only 3. Two things follow. The estimate runs about two and a half weeks behind real time, so the true number's probably mid-80s right now. And LDWF doesn't give much warning when it closes. Run the pace forward and the season ends somewhere between late August and Labor Day. If a limit of snapper is on your summer list, this is the month, and maybe just the fortnight. Four fish, 16-inch minimum, descender rigged. Relentless Sportfishing's July 28 report called the snapper and mangrove fishing exceptional, if you needed another push.

Mahi. Same Relentless report: a huge influx of mahi, stacked on the rip lines and grass mats. Meanwhile somebody in one of the Louisiana groups asked the question of the week: how far out of Southwest Pass do you run to find them, and which way? Honestly, wrong question. August mahi aren't at a distance, they're on an edge: the rip where blue water meets green, a grass mat, a color change. Some days that edge sets up 15 miles out, some days 40. Find the edge first, then run to it. More on that in Rigged Up.

Yellowfin. The only dated offshore report of the week is Relentless again: tuna fishing picking up, some bigger fish showing at the close rigs, and their bet is it improves through August. Nobody else posted offshore numbers this week, which is what a west-wind week does to the fleet. This week hands the fleet its water back. Three per person, 27-inch curved fork length, HMS permit on the boat.

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The record of the week is wind. Friday through Tuesday, the reports all carry the same asterisk: stiff winds, hard west wind, and, as one of the group regulars put it, the fish gotta eat anyway. The boats that went got paid. The boats that stayed home got to watch it on Facebook.

The quiet story worth filing is the river. Venice Guide Service posted Saturday that it dropped from 8 feet to 3 at New Orleans in two weeks and should stay down until spring. The gauge backs him up: Carrollton read 3.5 feet Wednesday morning, Venice sat under a foot and a half, and a low, stable river in early August means the delta starts its fall cleanup ahead of schedule. Clean water is the whole inshore game down here. The same post carried a warning for trip planners: October and the first three weeks of November are already booked out at VGS, and the captain's own advice for latecomers is to look at December and January, which he says can be unbelievable after a mild winter. If a fall Venice trip lives in your head, it needs to live on a calendar.

And for the second straight week, the Hurricane Center's outlook reads "tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 7 days." An August with a quiet Gulf map and a flat forecast isn't a combination you waste.

Got To Fish, Capt. Jay Winters. The week's receipts are all inshore and the fall calendars are evaporating, so here's a Venice inshore captain we haven't pointed you at before. Winters runs redfish-first trips on a 24-foot Blue Wave bay boat, up to four people, eight hours for $800. That price is the same on his own site and through Captain Experiences, which isn't always how that works, and his page shows 37 reviews, all five stars. The trip's the classic delta day: off the dock at safe light, a run through the bayous, then drifting the grass edges for reds with trout, flounder, and black drum in the mix. With the river dropping and the tide building, the sight-fishing water's on its way.

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A rip chart subscription. That mahi question from the groups, how far and which way, is the exact question a satellite service answers every morning. RipCharts and Hilton's Realtime-Navigator both sell the same basic picture: daily sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, and altimetry shots with the rips, edges, and eddies drawn on top. Venice is the best argument for one in the Gulf, because the river builds edges here like nowhere else, and the blue water can slide from 12 miles to 40 in a couple of days. Pull the morning shot, mark where the color line crossed the rigs, and run to structure instead of hope. On a flat weekend like this one, the subscription pays for itself in fuel you don't burn searching. No link and no kickback here, neither one is an affiliate. August is just when these things earn their keep.

Pick your day, because for once they all work. Thursday's the flattest: southeast around 5 knots, seas a foot or less inside 20 miles, building to about 2 feet out at the shelf by afternoon. Friday and Saturday run east at 5 to 10 with seas around 2 feet nearshore and 2 to 3 farther out, and Sunday eases back to southeast at 5. The catch is the summer pattern coming home: storm chances build through the weekend, mostly morning stuff over the water, so read the radar at dawn, especially Saturday. No advisories anywhere in the product.

Inshore, the tide does the opposite of last week: it builds. Every day runs one high near dawn falling all the way to an evening low, and the range grows from about a foot Thursday to over a foot and a half Sunday as we close on Tuesday's new moon. That's a long, hard afternoon fall, strongest right when the weekend peaks. Water at the mouth is holding 85 to 87 degrees. The river's flat at its summer low. August heat is the tax on all of it, so dawn starts and more water than you think.

The plan writes itself: offshore Thursday or Friday before the storm chances thicken, inshore any afternoon you've got, and Sunday's fall is the strongest pull of the week.

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Two club dates. The New Orleans Big Game Fishing Club's schedule shows a club tournament this Friday and Saturday, August 7 and 8, with the New Orleans Invitational, the club's big billfish event, running August 20 to 23. If the flat window holds, the club boats picked a good weekend to fish.

Empire results watch. The Empire South Pass Tarpon Rodeo weighed its last fish Saturday, and as of press time nobody's published a board, not the Champions Cup page, not the Gazette. We'll print the results when they post rather than guess at them.

The dock argument, in one thread. Under Reel Shot's standing-room-only Monday photo, the comments ran the whole state of the fishery in twenty entries: "Hows the snapper?" (see The Report), a hopeful "Pomps?", one honest "slow day and all small fish," and the eternal grumble about keeping limits at all. Every dock in Louisiana is having this exact conversation.

Where's the bow pointed this weekend, the rips or the marsh? Hit reply and tell me. Best answer gets borrowed for next week's issue, with your name left out of it.

Last week the weekend was the skip. This week there isn't one.

Until next Thursday.

Joey

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