By Tim Barefoot
I’ve long been a proponent of chumming up a place on the bottom with squid and then feeding grouper a big live bait. After the last few trips, I’m starting to rethink this tactic because of the number of sharks we’ve been catching.
I’ve never seen as many sharks as we are seeing right now. The bottom is covered with them, and the top layer of the water column is full of them. This past trip, we put out five Spanish mackerel on light lines hoping for a wahoo bite. We caught five sharks almost instantly. One of these bites was the biggest tiger shark I’ve ever seen. It was at least 12 feet long and 2 feet wide across the head. The rest of them were standard 6- to 9-footers; it takes a toll on you to get them to the boat for dehooking.
Between all the American red snappers—which we aren’t allowed to keep—and all the sharks, we’ve been run off of several square miles of bottom lately. Thankfully, we’ve found some of the grouper we’re looking for, but I’m seriously rethinking the “chumming” part of the tactics I usually employ. Normally, I begin on a spot by dropping whole squid on jigs, which the smaller fish pick apart to create a lot of smell down on the bottom. Then I drop live pinfish or small snappers to the grouper drawn in by the “chum.”
Lately, I’ve resorted to dropping big, pretty live baits first to see if we can get a few grouper bites before the taxman arrives, and it’s become a matter of WHEN rather than IF he shows up. It’s “hit-and-run” fishing. We pull up on a nice mark with pinfish and grunts already rigged on the jig. I hit the spot lock on the Rhodan and drop in for a few good bites. When the sharks show up, we just move up or down the ledge. Lather, rinse and repeat as often as needed. Granted, we haven’t boated as many of the smaller snappers or seabass for the cooler, but we’ve caught some beautiful grouper with this “hit-and-run” style of bottom banging.
The wahoo are different story. We quit putting the light line out due to the instant shark bite. I’ve got to figure something out for that. From now until the end of October or the first of November, wahoo will be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They will come inside the edge of the Gulf Stream following big stacks of bait. As usual, some king mackerel fisherman will catch a 100-pounder on a live menhaden in less than 100 feet of water while chasing a tournament-grade kingfish.
I said all that to say this: We’re going to take more pinfish and less squid to catch “hit-and-run” grouper. Someone please educate me on a bait that will not catch a red snapper!
For more info on the jigs and bait, check out Tim Barefoot’s YouTube channel and website, barefootcatsandtackle.com.
