A white red snapper?

Red snappers are usually, well … red.

But Tyler Bourgeois of Raceland caught the exception to that rule on a June 1 offshore fishing trip out of Moran’s Marina in Fourchon.

While fishing for red snapper along a line of oil rigs near Grand Isle with a group of friends competing in the Catholic High of Baton Rouge Alumni Rodeo, Bourgeois hauled in what he thought was going to be a red snapper.

But when he got it to the boat, it turned out that the red snapper was actually white.

“I am an avid outdoorsman. I grew up hunting and fishing bass in the marsh, but it was only my fourth time offshore fishing,” Bourgeois said. “We had two fish on at the same time and everybody else was at the front of the boat. I was focused on my fish in the back, and I was kind of puzzled when I pulled it up. I said, ‘Hey, I got a white snapper.’ I just knew it was something different because of its eyes (which were black with blue around them).”

After a little research, Bourgeois, 24, learned he caught a leucistic red snapper.

The fish weighed 13.34 pounds, was 29 inches long and had a small splattering of orange and bit in what Bourgeois estimates was about 120 feet of water on cut hardtails.

While often confused for albinos, leucistic animals are not completely absent of pigmentation, they simply have partial losses of pigmentation.

Bourgeois took detailed measurements of it in order to get a replica of the fish, which died after being caught, made by a Florida company.

Bourgeois was on the 38-foot Fountain boat of his friend Hunter Andras and the fishing team ABL Fabrications, which won the five-fish red snapper stringer division of the rodeo with a total of 96.73 pounds.

But the leucistic red snapper proved to be the highlight of the trip that the group of friends will never forget.

“Things kind of stayed quite about a day after I caught the fish,” Bourgeois said. “But when I put it on Facebook it really blew up. It really was the trip of a lifetime. I am almost speechless about it. We had multiple lines in the water at the time, but I guess when it’s your time to catch a fish like that, it’s just your time. I was lucky enough for it to bite on my line.”