I know it’s the middle of winter, the water is cold, and you may have even winterized your boat. However, now is the time to prepare your tackle and rigs for the opening of grouper season.
As a commercial captain and seafood company owner, I get asked daily about my technique for consistently catching red snapper, scamp and gag grouper. As a kid, I always listened to the old salts on the docks in my home state of Rhode Island. I could sit for hours and listen to these men talk about catching everything from fluke and scup to giant bluefin tuna. I knew early on that I was going to be a commercial angler. One of the earliest things I learned was to keep a logbook of every trip and write down the things that worked and didn’t work. Things like water temperature, wave height, wind direction and even barometric pressure. After a while, you start to see patterns which will definitely improve your fishing.
I was lucky enough to be stationed here in the Marine Corps; and when I got out, I immediately went right back to fishing. Shem Creek became my second home, and I listened to everything that Captains Randolph Scott, OC Polk or Harold Olson would teach me. I learned a lot from these gentlemen, and I owe them a tremendous amount of gratitude. I have never had an issue teaching someone my craft, and I still enjoy watching someone boat their first grouper or snapper.
For many years, I did things the old school method – heavy rods, giant Penn reels, Dacron line and, of course, giant sinkers. I caught plenty of grouper and snapper, but I was always tired and beat up from fighting the tackle as much as the fish.
About 10 years ago, a few companies came out with what they called jigging rods. I looked at these tiny rods with utter disdain; to me, they looked like trout gear. How in the heck are you going to catch a grouper on such a small fishing rod?
A friend of mine tried to convince me to use one. He actually stuck one in my hands (a Trevalla XXH, Stradic 8000) as I was boarding a boat to head offshore. I told him I would bring it back in two pieces, and he laughed as he headed up the dock. Much to my amazement, I fell in love with this rod and this type of tackle after one fish, a 65-pound amberjack. Not only did I boat this fish in record time, it put the fun back into fishing. This tackle was designed to be used with butterfly jigs, which by the way are a very effective way to catch grouper and snapper; but today, I will concentrate on live bait fishing.
Any small fish can be used for live bait, but I will tell you which ones are my favorites. Everybody knows about pinfish and menhaden, but I prefer cigar minnows and hard tails that we catch with Sabiki rigs around channel markers and artificial reef structure. Over the years, I have found that the smallest size Sabiki rigs with the red dots work the best. Don’t waste your money on those four and five dollar bait catchers, as the bargain bin 99-cent rigs seem to work just fine. For me, Sabiki rigs are a one-shot deal. After filling a live well with enough bait for the day, I wind up the used rig and throw them in the trash bin. Your live well is very important; so do not over-crowd your bait, and be sure to remove any dead or dying bait as these will contaminate your live well causing more bait to die. Quality bait should always be a priority. Many times, it will take us longer to catch a live well of quality bait, then it will to limit out on grouper. One day it took us two hours to catch enough cigar minnows for the trip but only 47 minutes to put a five-man limit of scamp grouper in the boat.
Now that you have a live well full of frisky bait, it is time to position the boat over your intended target. Learning to anchor over structure takes practice. Before the advent of GPS plotters, we used marker buoys to position the boat over what we saw on the depth sounder. I can’t tell you how many times I would watch as we drifted right on by the marker buoy, knowing we would have to try again. However, practice does make perfect; and now with a good plotter, anyone can master this skill with just a little practice. Location is everything in reef fishing. Being 50 feet off the structure will make the difference between a full fish box and going home empty. I have been known to move four or five times just to get positioned correctly over a small rock, because the payoffs are huge.
My favorite set up for live bait fishing is the old Carolina rig. I start off with a 3-foot spider hitch in my mainline – 65 or 80-pound braid – and connect it to a 12-foot, 100-pound test, mono or fluorocarbon leader using an Albright Knot. This is a shock absorber and will give a little when a large fish makes a run. Depending upon depth, I will use anywhere from 6- to 16-ounce sinkers. The sinker is free to slide on the leader, and I crimp a heavy snap swivel on the other end of the leader. I keep a ready supply of 3-to 4-foot long, 150-pound test leaders with high-quality circle hooks, ranging in size from 6/0 to 12/0. Do not skimp on your hooks; I cannot stress that enough. They are the only piece of equipment that ever comes in n contact with the fish. I use Owner, Mustad, and Gamakatsu hooks. How you hook your baits is also very important. If the current is very strong, or you are drifting – which I do not recommend for grouper fishing – hook the bait up through the roof of the mouth, but be careful not to damage the brain or eyes. Do not pin the mouth closed by hooking through both lips. Once anchored, I prefer to hook my bait just above the anal fin, causing the bait to swim away from the sinker. Let the rig down slowly until the weight hits the bottom, then lift it up about a foot if you are looking for grouper, but bring it up 20 feet if you want to catch a trophy red snapper. Another tip for catching red snapper is to clip the tail fins off your bait, causing him to bleed just a little, which will draw a strike from any big red snapper on the reef. Remember that elephants eat peanuts; some of my largest red snapper – over 30 pounds – have come from small cigar minnows with their tails clipped. Finally, let Rodney do the fishing. What I mean by that is when your bait is set, put the rod in the rod holder and leave it alone. I have seen more people lose jumbo fish by trying to set a circle hook. If you let him take the bait, he will hook himself.