By: Capt. Bart Marx
Check the FWC regulations for red snapper this month. It has been my experience that you need to travel into one hundred feet of water to find these great eating fish. It is a long ride and fuel is not cheap these days, but if you are able to do this type of trip you could target some other snapper as well and some of the artificial reefs and wrecks will also hold yellow tail snapper. You may even encounter some of those reef donkeys better known as amber jacks in some of the same areas. If you are in some of those areas where you may find some red grouper on the way back to shore, you could stop and drop some baits down. I am still old school with the anchoring. Most of the trolling motor manufactures make the long shaft one hundred-pound thirty-six volt with anchor lock and I have some anglers that use them and tell me they are great. I have an electric anchor puller that I like, and I know that the electric trolling motor devices I have been told you can move over and or forward or back and with the anchor it is a little trickier to do this. You can let line out or bring it in. You can tie the anchor to move sideways a short distance. To move it further you may have to pull the anchor and move. And in the past, we used the floating ball with the ring to raise the anchor. Well for me, I use the anchor with the electric puller for now on my 25ft. Parker walk around cuddy with a single 225 Yamaha, which is my offshore boat which has a canvas covering over the aft deck for shade and rain protection. Currently, I have a State of Florida fishing license that limits me to nine miles offshore for hire, so I’ll target snapper like lane and mangrove. There are grouper in those depths most of them under the twenty-inch minimum and every now and then we catch a twenty inch one to harvest on some of my trips. There may be a few king mackerel slowly traveling north and this time of year the snook migration is in full swing. In our area you need to check FWC regulations when they might open them to harvest one. They will be along the beaches and on the back sides of those barrier islands around docks and points with mangrove out cropping’s to ambush unsuspecting pray. June is one of the months that you could accomplish an inshore Grand Slam which in the same day you catch a red fish, snook, trout and a tarpon or you may catch a garbage can slam that is a jack fish, catfish, lady fish and stingray. Near shore or in the estuaries you can also encounter plenty of sharks to test your largest fishing setups.