Inshore Grouper Fishing

This is the time of the year when you can go grouper fishing in a small boat without ever leaving sight of land. Today was one of those perfect days for this type of fishing trip. We had a light easterly wind in the morning, then dead calm around 1pm, then the west convection winds kicking up in the afternoon.
Unfortunately, this rock appears to have been fished hard recently. The best way to tell if an inshore rock has been fished, is the amount of tall seaweeds that are on the rocks. Typically when you catch a few grouper the fish will run for the cover of the rocks and your line tends to cut the seaweed down like a weed eater. And this was the case, after a nice warm growing season, the tall seaweeds where cut off at the roots. So my guess is someone else knows of this rock and recently fished it pretty hard. There was one piece of seaweed left which came up with this little grouper.
As you can see below there are no tall weeds left. Typically you can find rocks like this one by the tall seaweed. If the seaweed is not cut off by fishing or passing boats, they will grow to the surface.
The one little grouper 2 lb grouper minus the 3 lbs of seaweed.
The best part about inshore grouper fishing, is that the grouper on these rocks are not residents. Even after the rock has been fished out, the offshore grouper moving in to the shallow water will come across the rock and set up temporary residents. The key to a good inshore grouper rock is the rock most have good cover (hollow areas under the rock, tall grass) and plenty of near by food.

Good Luck
Zippyjr


Tide : Incoming
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 3/4 full
Temp: 92 F
Water Temp :84 F
Wind: 0-5 mph West
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 1 short grouper, 5 hound fish and 1 mackerel.

More Bluefish, trout and cobia.

We had such a good time yesterday that we decided to do it again. I was hoping the whitebait was still bunch up. They where not and I had to through the net about 10 times to get about 50 baits. The whitebait was still in the same area around the turn marker in the Bayport channel, but they where scattered around due to the birds. Also to note the whitebait was thick in Centipede bay. While catching whitebait a small cobia was chasing the bait around the boat. This kept the bait at a distance from the boat. So the only solution I could find was to toss out a bait with a hook.

While the cobia was short, it did put up a nice fight and once released it left the area.

Once we had the whitebait we ran over to the the Hernando Beach channel and started at marker 5. We used 20# fluorocarbon leader, which proves to be inadequate for the teeth of a blue fish. We lost 4 hook within the first 5 minutes. So I switched out the leaders to 30# which cut done on the hook loses. We caught about 10 bluefish and decided to move and look for some trout. If you want bluefish the cut between markers 5 and 7, I caught them there for the last week. The next couple of cuts we caught 4 trout, but none as big as yesterdays, but all in the 20 inch range. We also picked up an assortment of jacks, lady-fish, blue-runners and a bonnet-head shark and a few small grouper. It rained on and off most of the day, so we did not get many pictures


Next stop was Centipede bay. We started in the back and saw a few fish cruising the rocky area. Tossed out some whitebait and the redfish swam right by it. This was a bit odd, but I think I figured out why a redfish would pass up a whitebait. A few minutes later we heard a crash in the water about 100 yards behind the boat. As it turns out is was a pelican diving on a big school of whitebait. So my guess is the redfish that I saw where coming back from dinner, I though I heard one of them say "I can't eat another bite". We did manage to get a a little 18 inch redfish to bite and he looked like he just got back from an all you can eat buffet.

Next week we plan to head out to some shallow rocks for inshore grouper fishing.

Good Luck
Zippyjr

Tide : .02 11:32am Rising
Water Clarity : clear
Moon Phase: 13% full
Temp: 92F
Water Temp : 84F
Wind: 5 mph NE - 10 mph W
Bait: Whitebait
Results: Trout, bluefish, jacks, cobia, bonnet head shark, ladyfish, rat red, grouper.

Fall Fishing is heating up

After Sunday's one redfish day, I thought we would go for round two. We left out of Jenkins creek to pick up whitebait. We hit the turn marker and the bait was thick. One cast and I could feel the extra weight of the bait fish in a 10 ft net. Which means I now have more bait than the live will hold. Skimmed off the larger baits and tossed in about 100 small baits (for live chum) and headed over to the Hernando Beach Channel.


We started at marker 5 and caught about 10 bluefish and jacks. While this was fun, we where looking for dinner. So we started moving in one cut at a time. The second turned out good. We had a double hook up on trout 25 and 26 inch trout, which filled the limit on 20+ inch trout.



We also caught a 12 inch mangrove snapper. I have seen bigger snapper around the rocks and I am thinking that it might be worth a shot to try to chum up the snapper.
We had a small bluefish on and this little cobia was chasing the bluefish trying to eat it. Clearly the cobia's eyes where bigger than it's mouth. So I tossed out a bait that would fit and he took it.

For those who have never caught a cobia, this is a baby, 40lb cobia are not uncommon. If you do catch one, they pack a big surprise, not only do they fight hard, once boated be very careful of there spines just behind their head. A typical place you would hold the fish when removing the hook.Much to our surprise we caught a 21 inch grouper. I've caught 10-16 inch grouper around the rock, but never one this big. A little bigger and he would have come home for dinner....

Over all it was a good day, we had non-stop catching and pretty good weather.

Good Luck,
Zippyjr

Tide : Rising
Water Clarity : Clear
Moon Phase: 13 % full
Temp: 92 F
Water Temp :84 F
Wind: 5 mph NE - 15mph W
Bait: Whitebait
Results: 4 Trout, 1 Cobia, 3 Grouper, 2 Sea Bass, 1 Mangrove Snapper, 10 Jacks, 5 blue runners, 12 bluefish.