# Ensco 8506 on Blue Spirit 03/04



## Frenchy (Oct 2, 2007)

First blue water trip on this new to me 29ft hydrocat, just came back from work where I spent 5 weeks next to a platform(Clyde) in the North Sea, felt the urge to right back to look at another rig, lol !!
My friend Ferdi, hard core angler, was visiting from Germany and wanted to run the boat. Conditions have been deteriorating as far as blue water for the past two weeks with a push from the Mississippi and looking at Hilton the area close and around Ensco 8506 looked the best, to me anyway...
Left Friday early with a crew of five, seas were not smooth, good 2/3 foot chop and a 10 knots wind on the nose for the first 70/80 nm, the cat can take it but it greatly affected our fuel burn, glad we had the bladder, learned from this trip that the boat is more efficient at 4500 rpm than 4000 rpm, might have to look into a different prop, fuel transfer worked great, thanks to Xshark on the forum...
Green/dirty water pretty much all the way, did a couple of stops to launch a tuna spread and drag it far away from the boat as we saw some yft busting but no joy. Finally about 10 nm from the drilling rig water became much better and we saw a few patches of grass, thought we would never get to it...trolled towards the rig for a couple of hours with no joy but some bonitos... We were the first fishing there for a while and marked tuna right away, trolling did not produced so we switched to live baiting, we quickly got some black fins and Ferdi the mad jigger brought some on board as well, all a decent size for bft...
We switched to chunking and began to pull yellow fins, small ones at first but ended up pulling a few over 40 pounds. Ended up fishing until midnight with half a dozen of yft in the 40/50 lbs range, some big bft and some blue runners and rainbow runners as well. Decided to head home as I was a bit concerned with our remaining fuel range and no spare ice (another thing to address).
All and all a good trip, bit of a long run but when you get the hitch... some of you will relate I am sure, it was great to fish with friends and to eat some fresh tuna on the grill last night.
Sorry no pictures but Ferdi will post some on shortly ( I hope).

Tight lines to all...


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## rauber (Oct 10, 2007)

Pics


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## rauber (Oct 10, 2007)

Pics 2


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## LIM-IT-OUT (Aug 26, 2014)

Thats some reel deal fishin and great eats


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## FenderBender (Oct 2, 2007)

Great job Emmanuel and crew, glad to see you get into some tuna. It's nice to have that kind of range, hope to fish with you before the year is out.


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## Jgatorman (Jun 8, 2013)

I made that trip 2 weeks ago to horn mountain had a couple of drill ships next to her. Caught some bft no yft and a bunch of mahi. Same boat with Volvo penta i/o diesels. What a fine boat she was...not the fastest but definitely got the job done. Congrats on your catch and your sweet ride!


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## SH27GameFish (Jul 4, 2014)

nice catch...how much fuel did you burn and how many miles traveled?


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## WAReilly (Jun 2, 2014)

Great trip!


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## Tim_G (Feb 22, 2008)

Great report Emanuel. Sounds like a great trip! Good job on the tuna!!!


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## fishsticker (Jan 11, 2009)

Nice report and good looking cat. Need better water to move in our area. 100-130+ miles to blue water is tough for most of us.


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## Bill Me (Oct 5, 2007)

Good deal Frenchy. We were headed to exactly the same rig yesterday and pulled the plug given how nasty the ride was. Had the same issue with fuel economy. It was about 1/3 lower than usual heading into that sea. I sure was glad we were not sitting out there this AM when I looked at the radar. So glad you, Ferdi and the crew had a safe and successful trip. Great looking new sled.


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## rauber (Oct 10, 2007)

it was a great trip and great crew...
catching yft with poppers is great!


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## bcahn (Jan 10, 2013)

I see you got her in the water, great report Mr. Frenchy and awesome pics!


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## Jason (Oct 2, 2007)

Great job on the tunas!!! Awesome out there and a fine sled!!!


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## FishFighter92 (Jul 10, 2012)

Did yall end up finding that blue-green rip out there?


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## Frenchy (Oct 2, 2007)

We covered 282 nm, burnt 250 gallons, found the rip about ten miles from Ensco, color was blue to green, during the night as we were fishing, current change brought in much clearer water charged with sea weed.


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## Spoolin Up (May 3, 2011)

Boat looks great!!

Sent from my LGL41C using Tapatalk


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