by Capt. Bart Marx
Hello fellow anglers,
For those that have learned how to handle the heat this time of year you may want to do some night fishing. August and September are the best months for night fishing in our area. Plan your trip to leave while the sun is still up, but after the afternoon t-storms. The mangrove, lane, and yellow tail snapper should be ready for some action.
There are several different ways to chum. In the Keys, they use the sand balls to chum. They use sand you could buy at Lowes or Home Depot and some frozen chum from your bait shop and some type of oil menhaden or vegetable will do. You may use oat meal or elbow macaroni noodles to use as a bulk filler. I have been on the boat with guys that had them frozen and deployed them, it seemed to work well. Or you may thaw the ground up chum and have your stuff in buckets to make your fish stew chum. Mixing the ingredients to the consistency of bread dough so it stays together till it lands on the bottom and explodes and the crowd goes wild. As you land a few of these chum bombs, the fish will stack up and you are building life under your boat. As the activity on your depth/fish finder expands, you can start to use some of your frozen bait for catching snapper and whatever you have drawn to your party. Frozen bait I mean is squid, Spanish sardines, and some other types of frozen small fish. And you should have shrimp-everybody likes shrimp. If you have chosen a natural bottom spot, you should have no problems with the goliath grouper. If it is big enough to hold goliath, you may choose to not fish that spot. You may find red or gag grouper at night, too. Mostly it will be the snapper you will be targeting for your pleasure.
Depending on how far from the beach you travel determines what rules you play by. Inside 9 miles you have state regulations, beyond that is federal waters. Do your research before you travel out to harvest some good table fare.