We didn’t launch until 9:00 am because some dummy forgot to call ahead to have the boat removed from storage the day before. This mistake, because we were going far and deep was going to cut into our time catching live bait and force us to rely heavily on frozen bait—squid strips, LYs, and hard tails. Everyone knows that live bait is always best. Without live bait, you might as well stay home.
Fast forward more than an hour after catching a handful of sand perch a few miles south of East Pass, and we’re at our first spot. The grouper and snapper bite was slow. And when we got a bite, the fish would just mouth the bait and let it go.
Eventually, the red grouper bite turned on, and we started catching them on any kind of bait we put down. Soon, we had our limit of red grouper, but we couldn’t seem to stop catching them or really start catching red snapper. We moved locations and cranked our baits high in the water column. Still, we were catching red grouper. Many of these post-limit grouper, of course, were bigger than the ones already in the cooler. It was sad to release them.
It was finally time to head to the ramp without our limit of snapper. But we just had to fish a snapper tree we found about 3 miles from where we gave up. After a few minutes, we had our limit of red snapper. The biggest one at this spot was caught on a live tomtate on a line weighed down with just a 1 oz. sinker.
What worked:
Sticking to our plan and not giving up during the slow bite worked.
Keeping baits high in the water column with a bait weighted down with just a 1 oz. sinker worked for catching large snapper.
Eight-inch-long squid strips made for excellent bait for both red snapper and red grouper.
Out deep, frozen bait seems to work as well as live bait.
My fourth or fifth attempt at building an underwater camera tripod—look for details in the post titled "What Does a Good Red Grouper/Red Snapper Hole Look Like?"
Having an extra cooler worked because it gave us enough room a limit of red grouper and red snapper.
What didn’t work:
Using a kite rod with a level wind reel to lower a 3 lb. descending device didn’t work, got a major backlash and the level wind failed, but I am not ready to give up on this concept.
Inline circle hooks don’t really work to keep fish from getting hooked in the throat, but my BakerHXSS dehooker is the best tool I’ve found for dealing with throat-hooked fish.
Here are the trophy pictures:
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