The thrill of the catch is what hooked Ross Chouest on blue marlin fishing. Yet today, he’s come to enjoy the whole atmosphere of being out on the water with family and friends – and of course, catching fish!

Chouest was born in Galliano, Louisiana, into a fishing family. His grandfather pioneered much of the recreational fishery off the Gulf of Mexico, his father would take clients and friends out fishing and his two brothers Dino and Damon have near-record catches and tournament wins under their belts.

“The Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast is a rich fishery,” says Chouest. “There’s everything – dolphin, tuna, red fish, trout and billfish too.”

He also started blue marlin fishing in the Virgin Islands at a young age.

“I remember fishing out of St. Thomas on the Alchemist with Capt. Mike Lemon when I was 6 or 7 years old,” says Chouest. “My older brothers were fishing. It was exciting to watch them, but I couldn’t wait to catch my own blue marlin.”

Chouest got his chance a few years later at the age of 10 out on the Virgin Islands’ North Drop.

“The marlin was on the small side, and my brothers let me reel it in because of its size, but it was still exciting,” he recalls.

Trips to Costa Rica and Panama over the next few years enabled the then grade-schooler to practice his angling skills even more on both marlin and sailfish.

Back on land, Chouest played basketball in high school. His team finished runner up for the state championship during his junior year and won the title in his senior year. This led to a recruitment offer by Coach Buddy Cremeans to play basketball at Georgia Tech. Two years later he transferred to Louisiana State University (LSU) and ultimately graduated from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida.

“The amount of time I had to fish went down when I was in college and playing basketball,” he says. “But I did do some offshore fishing while at FAU and our family took the Freedom (65-foot American Custom Yacht) and C-Condo to Hawaii to fish during this time.”

In the Chouest family, Dino is known as the hunter, Damon the fishermen and Ross the basketball player.

“We actually all do all three, except Damon doesn’t hunt,” says Chouest. “All the sports help each other. It takes communication, team work and a competitive drive whether you’re playing basketball or are catching a blue marlin.”

The blue marlin is Chouest’s favorite fish to catch.

“It’s the most challenging,” he says. “There’s the aggressive bite on the pitch, the acrobatics and jumps during the fight, and then the catch.”

Chouest prefers natural bait, 50-pound test and pitch-baiting in order to see the bite close up.

“Damon and I fished the BXRL (Billfish Xtreme Release League) series tournaments with Norm Issacs back in the early 2000s. That’s where I did more pitch baiting and got better at it,” he says.

The two brothers fished the BXRL as Team American along with fellow angler Dominick Lacombe, Freedom captain Joey Birbeck and mates Danny Ford and Dean Nicholls. They were sponsored by American Custom Yachts, one of the Chouest family’s companies.

Today, Chouest works as a manager in his family’s business, Edison Chouest Offshore, a family of companies that design, build and own offshore supply vessels for the oil and natural gas industries. Business has enabled Chouest to fish in some cool locations such as Brazil.

“Fishing off Brazil is similar to in the Gulf because you fish around oil and gas structures,” he explains. “The FPSOs (floating production, storage and offloading) are like 1000-fooot long monohulls ships that are semi-submerged in deep water. There are many bait fish and marlin around them.”

Last summer, the company had a few of its vessels in the South Pacific. This led Chouest to a fishing trip in Tonga aboard his family’s 80-foot Patriot. “The blue marlin bite was great in Tonga,” he tells. “We saw an average of five blue marlin a day. That was every day except Sunday. The King decreed that you can’t do anything on Sunday. Our captain, Terry Stansel, asked if that included fishing and we got ‘yes’ back for an answer.”

The fishing grounds off Tonga didn’t take that long to reach, says Chouest, “but it did a while to reach the Kingdom of Tonga from Louisiana, including an overnight in Hawaii. The flight from Hawaii is only 5 ½ hours, but because you cross the international date line you arrive the next day.”

It was in Magdalena Bay, Mexico, back when Chouest was a student at LSU that he enjoyed his best day of fishing.

“In two days of fishing we caught 86 stripe marlin, 44 the first day and 42 the second. I caught 44 of them,” he says. “The Freedom was down there and we got word the bite was hot. It was in December and my dad and I flew down there. A few days earlier the fishing was even better with reports in the 70s for the day. We got there at the tail end of the bite, but it was still pretty good.”

Chouest’s best fish story happened to the east off Palm Beach, Florida.

“We did the bucket trick on good friend Kacey who had never been fishing. It was pretty funny. We all ended up having a good laugh,” he tells.

It was winter and the sailfish were really biting. While Kacey was in the cabin sleeping, Chouest and the crew tied a bucket to his friend’s line and let it out a few hundred yards behind the boat. Then they all yelled there was a fish on the line. Kacey came running out half asleep, grabbed his rod and began to reel it in with all his might. At the same time, the captain backed down hard drenching the novice angler with the cold Atlantic waters. Chouest and the crew coached their friend, told him to keep cranking and not to allow any slack in the line. All worn out, Kacey finally got to the end of the line and eyed his prize….only to find the bucket. The next day, Kacey was vindicated with his first sailfish catch.”

While Chouest mostly enjoys recreational fishing, he does like to fish tournament too. He fished three to four years in the BXRL and came close to winning the series. Today, he competes in two to three tournaments a year. These include the USVI Open/Atlantic Blue Marlin or ‘Boy Scout Tournament’ in St. Thomas and two tournaments off Louisiana: the Grand Island Tarpon Rodeo which he placed top angler in 2009 in the billfish division and the Cajun Canyons Billfish Classic.

“I enjoy both fun fishing and tournament fishing,” he says. “There are pros and cons to each. In tournaments, you have competition and camaraderie. That’s what I like about the Boy Scout Tournament. The cons are that some tournaments have rules above and beyond those if IGFA and that’s what some people don’t like.”

The Chouest family is in the process of building a 90-foot sports fishing boat, he says. “It will have 9000 HP, so it will be big, comfortable and fast. We’re going to name it C’est la vie after my grandfather. That’s what he named all his boats.”

Chouest’s plans for fishing in the year ahead include the South Pacific, since that’s where the Patriot is currently based, off the Gulf of Mexico and in the Virgin Islands.