For bait, we headed to an area in about 40-45’ where we found Atlantic bumper on a prior trip. I knew we had found them when the sonar screen was nearly filled with echoes. No other baitfish seems to fill the sonar screen like this.
We dropped sabiki rigs into the school and put a handful of Atlantic bumper into the livewell. Then the school vanished. A few circles of the boat later, we found the bait again, and caught about 2 more before the school disappeared. We repeated this chase and catch a bait or two several times.
Next, we headed to a spot that usually holds cigar minnows. The cigar minnows were slow to bite, but when we gave up fishing for bait, we had about two dozen baitfish in the livewell. These baits included Atlantic bumper, cigar minnows, an American shad, sandperch, and pinfish. Our frozen bait consisted of LY’s and bonita strips.
On the way to a spot south of S Tower, we saw fewer fish shows on the sonar than usual. I think the lack of fish activity resulted from the slow tide and the heat. Water temperatures were about 88 degrees on the way out. Eventually, we saw what appeared to be a classic snapper tree over a spot I had not fished before. It was time to stop and check it out. We caught nothing and had no bites.
When I reviewed the video from the GoPro later that evening, the truth was revealed. We were fishing over a school of tomtates, not red snapper. I suspect many of us get tricked into thinking that we’ve found a snapper tree when we’ve just found bait. It seems that bait schools try to avoid predators. But when the predators are in the bait schools, our baits don’t stand out enough to get many bites.
This red grouper below was the lone predator at the spot with the tomtates. It seemed as if he had something to say when he approached the camera.
When we reached our first known spot beyond S Tower, I lowered the camera while the others fished. Red grouper were being brought up one after the other but most were shorts that we vented and released. Nonetheless, the underwater video of the spot showed that the area was covered with red grouper and aggressive triggerfish that were bumping and biting my camera stand.
To see the video, click on this link to Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMiu2Gk ... 03cW04eHdl
Here are a few still shots from the video:
For more still shots, click here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMinoEluEF ... Y5ankxbWNu
We weren’t satisfied with the small red grouper and we moved on to our next spot. This spot turned out to be our best spot. As soon as we dropped our live or dead baits down, we were getting bites. The fish were pulling hard on our lines. “Get the net, get the net,” everyone would exclaim as a big red snapper would appear below the boat. A few of these snapper exceeded 30 inches. Keeping our baits a few cranks of the reel from the bottom probably helped us find the red snapper.
I should also mention, I was trying out a new rod and reel this trip. For some reason, I decided I needed a lever drag reel and purchased a Shimano Speedmaster II12 online. The reel seemed a little wide for the jigging rod I had. I went to Kevin’s Sporting Goods in Tallahassee. The staff there was very helpful in guiding me to a Shimano Tallus PX extra heavy. The rod was a perfect match for the reel. Kevin’s has a good variety of quality saltwater fishing gear despite being far from the coast.
When we made it back to the boat ramp, the cooler held 7 red snapper, 1 mangrove snapper, and 6 red grouper. I brain spiked and bled all of the fish consistent with the ike jime process, but I successfully ran the shinkei jime wire from the head to the tail on only about half of them. If you are an expert on the ike jime process and can successfully run the wire on larger red snapper and grouper, I’d love to hear from you. (To learn more about how the ike jime process improves the quality of this, visit the Ike Jime Federation: https://ikejimefederation.com/.)
Here's our fish pile at the end of the day:
Here it is again with just the snapper:
