Grouper?????

[konrad]

On Monday I took a look at NOAA forecast to see they were calling for 1-2 foot seas. Then I looked at my calendar and realized there really wasn’t anything pressing going on with work so I decided to take the day off to see if there were any grouper around. Got down to Mashes Sands at 8am hoping we still had enough water to launch the boat. Thank God there was because I really didn’t want to drive all the way back to the St. Marks River to put in the boat. Not a cloud in the sky and seas less than a foot. The first spot we stopped at was some natural bottom in about 40” of water. When I turned the motor off my GPS/Depth recorder shut off too. When I tried to turn it back on nothing happened. I told my dad to start fishing while I tried to figure out what the problem was. He jigged up a few Black Sea Bass but I couldn’t seem to get my electronics working again. Since this was the first time I have taken my boat out in close to 3 months I wasn’t going to allow this to kill the day. Pulled out my backup hand help GPS that is on the boat for just such an occasion. Decided to plug in the numbers to the K and headed out there since you don’t need a depth recorder to figure out where the structure is. Upon arrival my dad dropped some dead bait down to the bottom and I started jigging. It didn’t take long before I was hooked up with a small AJ. We drifted pass the tower multiple times and never even got a nibble on the dead bait but I couldn’t keep the AJ’s away from my 3oz buck tail jig. After about 6 of them I started getting tired so my dad took over. While he was catching fish I decided to try fixing the electronics one last time. Within a few min I got it working again and we were good to go. Since the plan was to catch grouper we left the K and headed about 4 miles SE to some good structure. Spent a good 2 hours in that general area with nothing to show for our effort. Not even a short gag or a red snapper. This was a first for me at these locations. We decided that catching AJ’s was better than not catching anything so we headed back to the K. I lost count of how many we caught and left once our arms and backs couldn’t take any more. For the day we probable caught around 25 of them. There were two other boats out their too and the only thing I saw them catch was one Bull Red fish. After that we stopped by some structure in 45” of water on the way back in and nothing except a few Black Sea Bass. At that we decided to call it a day. With the exception of not catching a single grouper we couldn’t have asked for a better day on the water.

[big bend gyrene]

Not many good grouper reports of late!

Any theories from those of you who've hunted them most over the years???

[wevans]

I am far from the most experianced of this group buttttt, I think that since it hasn't been this cold in quit some time, they are just feeding much less "most all fish eat very little when the water gets cold" there is usually 1 or 2 days a week that they feed good and ya just gotta pray that yer fishing on that day

[konrad]

It has been my experience that when it gets real cold the fish go farther off shore. I fished in 40 to 60 feet of water yesterday and nothing. Nominally I would be fishing in 20 to 30 feet if we hadn't had that prolong cold snap. The water was also very dirty do to the high seas/wind. Maybe 8 foot vis in 60 feet of water. This prevents the water from warming as quickly as it would if it is clear. Low tide was at 10:20 so there wasn't much water movement when I was out. I tend to think those three things played a big role in not finding grouper yesterday but I could be wrong. In shore the water temp was 47 and off shore it was 56.

Last year was one of the best I had for inshore grouper. The weather was nice and we were able to get out almost once a week. This year it has been cold and windy. Yesterday was the first time I took my boat out since Nov. 4. The good news is their should be alot of grouper around this spring.

[Tom Keels]

My experience has been when the water is in the 50s or below the fish hold so tight or under cover that unless you drop the bait in their mouth they are not going to eat. Fish just don't move a whole lot when it's this cold.

[EddieJoe]

Konrad and Tom have the right answers, IMO. Divers say there are grouper in shallow over the winter, they are just holed up under ledges and don't move much. They are caught in deeper water (maybe 80-100') even in the cold winter because the water temperature there is somewhat warmer, and the fish are more active.

As I am not going that far offshore, I generally don't catch many grouper at all from January-early March. This year is so much colder, so every report I have seen indicates nuttin' doing closer in. This is the usual result of cold temperatures.

One final note is that there is an annual late fall/winter migration of the larger gags from nearshore waters to the middle grounds for reproductive purposes, so those fish are simply gone for a while.

EJ

[captkeyser]

I think that you are better off working a jig over the bottom almost like fishing a Texas rig for Bass. This way you can cover the contour of the bottom and eventually pull the jig across a Groupers face. This generally will only work in shallow water where you can cast the jig over the rock pile and work it back horizontally rather than just bouncing it vertically in one spot.