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Monday morning, Dec. 10. 8:45 and still a little foggy. Ventured out of Steinhatchee with some some frozen sardines and squid, and a couple of trolling lures to try to do our best to reduce the grouper population by a little. No grouper for us this day, but we did catch a cooler full of black sea bass and pink mouth grunts which were a whole lot of fun to catch. We went out to Steinhatchee Reef and had no success so turned South along the 30 ft. line and tried some trolling, but no luck there. When we stopped to pull in the trolling lures, dropped a line and started catching small groupers (not keepers) and lots of good size grunts. Stayed there for a while till we got a cooler full and came on in. Nice day overall, but I sure would like to hook up a big grouper on a trolling rig.



The wife caught bigger fish than this cutbait, but I didn't get a picture.



So they are not monsters, but after fishing on the Suwannee for a while, these fish are BIG !!!



Stay cool fish until I can get the electric knife to you...



Nice ride home on smooth waters from 15 miles out with the sun behind us. What a day, you could have took a bass boat out there !

So Karst, what was the final answer from all the advice you got about trolling?

That looks like a good haul to me. Good trip.

Ain't nothing wrong with them grunts

Just Fish wrote:So Karst, what was the final answer from all the advice you got about trolling?

Well JF, I guess I will just let youall more experienced anglers duke it out for a while longer, as you can see there is not too much concensus as of yet...

My take-aways so far are this:

1) Troll over structure/rocky bottom, as the grouper (or whatever fish) are not going to be there over that sandy smooth bottom.

2) On the main question of current effects, I had assumed fish would be moving in the current with me. But at least for grouper, your example of him sitting still and then bolting out of a hole to get the lure seems pretty valid. So presenting the lure at 4.32 mph to him could be read directly from the GPS without regard for current (or salinity, H20 temp, sunspots, etc. ).

3) I have not a clue how the above would apply to trolling for Kings or others, but not sure I care until I get grouper trolling under control.