FINALLY, BACK TO GROUPER FISHING

There was a time in my life that we took certain things for granted. For example, No limits and/or seasons on speckled trout, drum, flounder and especially GROUPER! I never thought I would say the two words “grouper” and “season” in the same sentence. Never mind, I’m just venting because I prefer bottom fishing and light lining above all other styles of offshore fishing.

I went through this last year about this time, but I’ll do it again for those folks who might have missed it. This is the way I start every location we anchor on, or post up with the Rhodan.

NOTE: We take two boxes of quid on every trip, and we typically have live pinfish from the marina also.

I typically have three or four folks with me every trip. We start by firing down whole squid on the jig. Meanwhile, I’m on the sabiki jigging up whatever is on the bottom below us. I don’t care what is coming up on the whole squid, as this is not the main focus. The real objective is to set a nice ‘chum slick” on the bottom to attract the fish you’re really fishing for. After 4 or 5 rounds of the whole frozen squid, we will fire down live pinfish or whatever I’ve jigged up on the sabiki. The other advantage of fishing a live pinfish, grass grunt, sailors’ choice or whatever you can jig up, is it eliminates the trash bites. In addition to eliminating the trash bites from small snapper, seabass and other “undesirables,” it’s like physcological warfare, as the gags, scamps and reds cannot digest all that is going on here. To them it appears like the pinfish, grass grunts etc, think the live baits were running around picking up squid pieces, and the squid or crab jigs have caught them and the live bait is struggling to get away. BAM!!! The bite happens. This, my friends, is the difference between

“bottom fishing” and GROUPER fishing.

Another bait that’s a dead ringer for a grouper bite is a butterflied bait. The butterflied bait on the bottom basically does the same thing as the squid. The small snapper and other smaller fish will hammer the filets until the grouper have had enough of it. You will feel the small fish biting it constantly, but then all of a sudden the small “pecking” bites will stop. Get ready, and don’t move it… the grouper has moved in and everyone else has to leave, because it’s time for the real bite!

Enough about the bottom. I will occasionally troll for a LITTLE WHILE, but this would be to accomplish two things at once. Catch a fish or two, but also to locate the best part of any given ledge with lots of bait and fish on the bottom. As soon as we locate the bait, reel in the troll baits and get to work! Everything you catch trolling, you can catch on the light line while you’re grouper fishing. Tuna, dolphin and wahoo are idiots for a big fat (live) greenie, sardine, cigar minnow or goggle eye out back behind the boat in the current.

All the best fishing,

Check out more from Tim Barefoot at barefootcatsandtackle.com