This past spring my good buddy Yong reached out to me to invite me on an offshore bottom fishing charter trip with him and his family. He was flying in from NYC with family and gear in tow. The plan for this trip was to go chase after deep-water grouper and snappers and do a bit of highspeed trolling with Captain Tyler and First Mate Jesse on the First Light. So I said of course I would come with. I already knew Tyler and Jesse would make sure we had a good time after cobia fishing with them before. There was one thing about this trip though, a couple of the big hitters would be out of season. When it comes to bottom fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, many popular species of fish have seasons put in place by the state and federal governments. The most popular of these species is the American Red Snapper which opens up every summer, followed by the Gag grouper in popularity. Often times anglers plan their trips around the seasons for these two species.
That was not the case for us though, even with the seasons on those two species being closed we knew if we played this right we would have a great trip with plenty of fish to bring home. Me and Yong went into this with two different game plans for this trip. He was going to be more technical using his slow-pitch jigging gear to target grouper and lightweight gear for snapper. My plan was more akin to grocery shopping. No finesse no technical gear, just a few heavier-weight rods and reels. Putting fish on ice was my biggest concern, being sporting or fair was not a concern for me this trip.
After an early start to the morning, we loaded up the cars and headed over to the marina to meet up with Captain Tyler and First Mate Jesse on the First Light. This is a 47 ft G & S fiberglass Sportfish that is capable of cruising at 20 knots. A super comfortable ride with an enclosed salon with AC, bunks, and a restroom. Once we got all our gear on board we set off and made our way out of the pass to our first stops of the day, a few bits of structure to catch some live bait for the day. On some medium-weight spinning rods, we dropped down some sabikis to the bottom and started jigging them to catch cigar minnows, herring, and pinfish. The main target was to get some small cigar minnows, the smaller the better. After a bit we got enough bait it was time to make the long run out.
It was going to be a longer run, the plan being to go out as far as possible for our charter time and fish spots as we work our way back in as the day goes on. So once we got all the sabiki lines clear it was time to set up the high-speed trolling gear. We were going to be running about 18-20 knots for the next couple of hours, so we put out two high-speed trolling lures to hopefully find a wahoo on our long run.
Unfortunately, the reels stayed silent for the whole ride out, but at least we were finally at the first stop. We were in about 300ft of water on some structure, name of the game was grouper. Scamp grouper in particular, while I did say earlier that many species are closed for a lot of the year, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other options to fill your coolers. Two popular grouper species are open in the Spring, the Scamp Grouper and Red Grouper. While neither species gets as large as a Gag grouper, they still get plenty big and are amazing table fare.
This is where the small cigar minnows come into the picture, scamp prefer smaller minnows. While a lot of species will eat big baits, scamps often eat the smallest of baits. So I got my rod setup for targeting scamp. A heavier-duty chicken rig with two circle hooks. The rod is a custom rod I had made by Cavitt’s Custom Rods, a heavier-weight blank on a Winthrop Adjusta-Butt, this was matched with a Daiwa Saltiga LD55-2SPD spooled up with 80lb braid. This is usually a tuna and trolling rod but works great for meat fishing. With the adjustable rod butt, it can be fished right out of the rod holder, while not super sporting I did say I was here for meat, not sport.
I netted a couple of cigar minnows out of the livewell and hooked them through the eye sockets and dropped them down. Letting them go all the way to the bottom, adding a bit of tension as I dropped it to keep the line from scoping out too far while we drifted. That way I wouldn’t get tangled up with anyone else, and be in better contact with my baits when they reach the bottom. Once I felt the lead hit the bottom, I reeled in just enough line to put tension on the line but keep the lead on the bottom. That way the rocking of the boat moves the lead just enough to make puffs of sand on the bottom to draw in curious grouper. Fishing a heavier rod in the holder, I held the line in one hand while keeping my hand on the reel knob with the order. Being ready to reel when I felt a good bite, and that did not take long I had a solid thump within a minute of hitting bottom.
Because we have to use circle hooks for bottom fishing in the Gulf, you don’t set the hook. The geometry of the circle hook actually sets when you evenly reel the line in, so the hook catches in the corner of the fish’s mouth. Feeling that thump with my left hand, I immediately started reeling and got tight. Seeing it bend this tuna rod I could tell immediately this was a good fish, and started evenly reeling the fish up. When fishing for grouper and snapper you want to reel nice and smooth. Don’t jerk the rod around with crazy pumps all you’ll do is either pull the hook right away or wear a hole in the fish’s mouth that will let the hook slip out when it gets a little slack. I got this nice big scamp to start my day.
I wasn’t the only one to hook up at this first spot though. With Yong’s cousin, and their significant other also hooking up right after me. We had the grouper fired up at this first stop, action makes more action when fishing offshore. Yong’s cousin brought up a couple of scamps while their significant other brought up a big scamp that was even larger than mine. We were one drop in and already a single person’s limit of grouper, it looked like it was going to be a great day. I dropped down another time after bleeding and spiking the scamp and got one more at this stop. Unfortunately, we had a few grouper pull off the hooks shutting down the spot. While action makes action when bottom fishing, missing or losing fish can shut down a spot real quick.
So with that first spot done, we moved to another spot a short distance away. This was a complete 180 from the first spot, with nothing much happening for a bit. Instead of immediate action, we were just soaking baits with no bites. Worried we were being cleaned by triggerfish I reeled in to see my baits were untouched. Capt. Tyler seeing this said to reel in so we could try somewhere else. This repeated for a couple more spots but at the 4th stop as Capt. Tyler said to bring the up again, Yong’s wife had a good hit and so did his cousin. Still, the rest of us reeled in, it was only 2 bites for 5 people fishing. More than likely we were going to move again. So they fought their fish and brought them up, with us looking into the water to see what they got. When we finally saw color we initially thought it was just a couple of small out-of-season red snapper. But once they got them to the surface we saw they were jumbo vermillion snapper. Seeing these jumbo beeliners, another name for vermillion snapper, Capt. Tyler said we were sticking around here and switching up our bait to cut mackerel instead of live bait.
While you may think smaller fish are boring, the daily limit of beeliner is 10 fish, while when in season red snapper is only 2 fish. So while vermillions never get anywhere near as large as red snapper, if you find the right grade of beeliner. You are taking home a lot more meat with beeliners vs red snapper. But while I want to say we absolutely loaded up the boat with these mondo beeliners, that wasn’t the case. We ran into a nuisance at this spot with the cut bait, triggerfish. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem for a spring trip, they were in season and are great eating. But the problem was they are great bait thieves with their sharp teeth and small mouths, and all of the ones we did hook up to were short. With the smell of salted mackerel in the water the triggerfish got all fired up and were beating the beeliners to the hook. So after only getting a couple more beeliner, Capt. Tyler called it and said to reel in again for us to try another spot.
Capt. Tyler said it was going to be a bit longer ride over to the next spot, so we decided it was as good a time as any to bring out lunch. Yong, being a chef up in NYC, made everyone, Capt. Tyler and Jesse included some delicious steak fried rice the night before. Taking that 20 minutes to eat and cool down in the air conditioning was great. Take note. you want to make sure to eat and drink while fishing. While you don’t have to go as fancy as Yong food-wise, make sure to pack something to eat on the water.
This trip continues in Part 2.
