You know you’re in for a great day when you break the inlet greeted by a slick flat calm ocean, hauling a livewell full of live pinfish and an ample amount of frozen minnows. If you grouper fish, you know this is the stuff dreams are made of.
Just for starters, you can run any direction on the compass, and however far you want to run without pounding your way out to the fish. On more than one occasion, I have seen grouper become very picky, after a good bite on the pinfish and/or frozen minnows. Have you ever been on a good bite that suddenly shut down? I’m not talking about the grunt, pinkie, sea bass or other snapper bite; I’m talking about the grouper bite. So have I. It’s not that the fish have all been caught or the fish swam away. You’re still marking them on the recorder, but they just shut down.
This is the optimal time to go domestic on your bait selection. Sometimes grouper become no longer interested in pinfish from the marina, menhaden from the river, ICW or the surf, or imported Spanish sardines or cigar minnows, from who knows where. In the eyes and nostrils of the offshore and nearshore grouper, all these baits are imported.
If you ever find yourself in this situation, it’s time to go to work and take destiny into your own hands. This is when you should break out the sabiki rig and jig up whatever is there. Whatever you jig up on the sabiki, carefully dehook them with a minnow-sized wire dehooker and pin them to the jig to send ’em right back down. Whatever came up on that sabiki is exactly what those grouper eat on an everyday basis.
Various species of live or butterflied smaller snapper and larger snapper cut into big streamlined chunks will often turn the bite back on. This can be the difference between sitting anchored on one or two locations to catch a limit, or moving around from ledge to ledge in order to put a legal number of “pigs” in the (ice) pen.
There are times when a live sardine or fat cigar minnow on the correct terminal tackle or jig is more than they can take. I have a tremendous amount of confidence in a live or butterflied grass grunt pinned onto a Decoy Jig as well. The beauty of fishing the live grass grunt (as long as your hand, or slightly longer) is the ability to weed out the “trash bite.” These larger live baits eliminate the grunt, pinkie or sea bass bite and limits the customer list to the very largest sea bass, big snapper and grouper.
African Pompano, cobia, all the jacks and the big sharks are also all highly vulnerable to this live or butterflied domestic bait on a jig connected to “clean” terminal tackle. To see exactly what I’m talking about, feel free to visit the website and watch all the videos you want detailing this jig/minnow combination and the simple, clean and ultra-heavy-duty tackle used to make it all happen.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to leave the dock with those live pinfish and/or menhaden and plenty of minnows. It’s kind of like a “bird in hand, beats two in the bush.” However, I feel the same as the offshore grouper… I prefer domestic fish.
All the best,
Capt. Tim Barefoot
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