Winter grouper fishing

[Dixie Wreck'd]

I have recently bought a 22' boat. I have been out about 22 miles max looking for grouper to no avail . I am new to fishing offshore salt water. Well to get to the point can someone please help me out with some GPS route or some kind of information on where to go to get winter grouper? Redfish, trout, ladyfish I dont have a problem getting. I would like a grouper sandwich =) Thanks in advance to anyone who replies to this. Oh yeah I am going of Lanark village at 6 am tommorow 1/27/08.

[Redfish Jim]

Welcome. Be sure to let us know how you do.

If you search on this board, you should find a lot of good information from previous posts.

Grouper will come into shallow water (15' - 25') in the early spring and late fall/early winter and you can probably catch one trolling with a stretch 25 or CD 18 by rapala (use a cd 14 if fishing 15' or less). I like the firetiger design the best and the white body with red head is also an old reliable. There's a stretch that is chartreuse and orange with black dots and rattles on the inside. It's pretty good too.

Be sure to watch your bottom machine as you troll and mark spots that you run across. Also mark any spot where you hook a fish even if you don't see anything. Pretty soon, you'll build up some numbers where you can go back and bottom fish. You'll probably find a few places that practically guarantee a fine seafood dinner. Black sea bass are always in these areas and are almost always biting if the grouper are not. They're as good to eat as grouper to me but just small so more fish to to clean. You can also catch flounder, trout, spanish mackeral, cobia, kingfish, grunts, jacks, sharks, etc. at various times of the year in these areas.

There are miles and miles of hard bottom in the 15' - 25' range within 8 miles of shore from Econfina to Dog Island (at least) that will hold fish during the early spring and late fall. A good bet is to locate a public reef and then thoroughly work the area around it to locate natural bottom. I think they put artificial reefs on natural hard bottom or they would otherwise cover up with mud or sand. I've always been able to find other good spots that way. If you have a GPS with a chart, try running back and forth over contour lines. The stone crabbers usually set traps in areas with live bottom so you can go exploring amongst them.

The best part about this type of fishing is that you don't have to run 22 miles offshore. This is by far a safer and more economical way to get a grouper. Don't expect to load the boat every time, but the odds of bringing home enough grouper to feed your family are pretty good at certain times of the year. You just have to be patient and take the time to find you some good spots. I prefer to just settle for other types of fish when the grouper aren't in the shallower water. If you're going after them tomorrow, check the weather and run to deeper water if it's safe (I'm guessing 35 - 45). That won't be too far out from dog island. All the techniques above will work out there too. There's a stretch that swims 35' I think and you could use one of those to cover some territory and find some good bottom.

Hope this helps and be sure to post reports once you start slaying them.

[Dixie Wreck'd]

Thank you! Yeah we have found (on other peoples boats) that the "red headed slut" strech 30 works well in the summer. Looks like im gonna have to go pick up some smaller plugs. I have a nautical chart that shows reefs and wrecks and stuff like that. Now should i look for an area that goes from like a 8' to 15' drop and fish along that?

[Redfish Jim]

Those would be good places to find. I'm just not sure there's many grouper in water that shallow right now even if you find the spots. This is something to try when the water temps get back to 60's.

I edited my post to mention that you probably need to get in deeper water than I'm talking about if you're going out tomorrow. I probably would use one of the stretch 30's in deeper water. Just remember that the grouper bite is pretty fickle. You can find good spots holding grouper and they wouldn't hit a live pinfish if you pinned a million dollar bill to it. They might bite a bare hook 20 minutes later. It could be that spots that haven't produced for you in the past will tomorrow. But I wouldn't get my hopes up too high so soon after a front comes through. Drop a gulp or some cutbait down and you'll probably catch dinner if you can find a good spot.

[fishfeeder]

Since I have traded my offshore days for the elusive quest of the Redfish.....PM me and I will give you a few #s out of St. Marks that you can pull grouper from, but as said by RedJim, drop a few SRTCH 20-30s watch the bottom machine and have a buoy handy tied off at 20ft longer than the depth you are trolling to mark a spot when needed.


Good Luck.....

[Tom Keels]

There is also a whole page of GPS numbers here.

http://www.bigbendfishing.net/reefs.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Plenty of places to start looking. Right now is about as cold as the water will get for the year. Trolling will probably be spotty at best. I would use small pieces of ly with light line and smaller hooks. Fish slooooowwww. From my past dives during this time of year I can tell you that if you are not right on top of structure, you aren't going to catch them. The fish just don't feed or move that much when the water is this cold. Also you are on just about the worst moon phase there is so the odds are stacked against you.

[Littoral]

Good luck tommorow & be careful out of Lanark, fog may be an issue
and there's not much water with the AM low and wind out of the north.

[Dixie Wreck'd]

Well thank you all for the help. I will hopefully post pictures of my catches tommorow. Thank you all again! I will still check this thread for any updates.

[Mook!]

Good luck tommorow & be careful out of Lanark, fog may be an issue
and there's not much water with the AM low and wind out of the north.

This is good advice - fog will almost for sure be an issue tomorrow with a predicted temperature rise of 20 or so degrees in just a few hours, the air will be warm and humid, and the water will be relatively cold. Water temps today were the coldest I've seen in 12 months, down in the low 40's a couple miles offshore around noon today. When you get warm humid air over cold water, it creates advection fog. This is the dense fog that lingers on the surface, and will likely get worse the warmer and sunnier it gets.

If you have a backup GPS like a handheld or something, bring it. Whether or not you bring that, make sure you at least have a good compass on board. We had advection fog in similar conditions in the middle of the afternoon a few weeks back while it was warm and sunny. Visibility was so poor for a while that you could not see from one side of the channel to the other. Also it became so dense for a 30-45 minute period that the GPS signal was going in and out.

[fishfeeder]

PMed you a few #s...Good Luck

[Dixie Wreck'd]

Thank you all fot all the help, we had a "OK" day slow at first till we hit the folloeing GPS marks: N29 42.002 W84 32.502

N29 42.102 W84 32.053

N29 42.073 W84 32.225


Good luck. Any questions on how we fished this area Pm me or reply to the thread. Here are the fish we caught: Flounder, Ref gags, HUGE BSB 18"!!! and a keeper grount! No big GAggs but the GPS anf fishing report said it was a Sh#ty day. This was a coral bottom all over this area. Good luck . Rememeber im new And i am trying to no make friends in the fishing comminity. Enjoy the routes!