Finally, A Legal Gag Grouper

Sea-Squatch

A buddy asked me and my son to go offshore sheepshead fishing w/ him. We did find some, but small legal sheeps. While sheepshead fishing, we kept talking about grouper. My buddy felt he had an area that might hold some grouper, so we ran a little farther offshore. We had a well full of live pogies that we netted that morning. My son dropped down first and got rocked up. While he and my buddy were trying to get him unsnagged, I quietly dropped down, got insta bit, and pulled up this 24.5" fish...



We were all pumped. My son caught a barely short gag, and we had numerous other break offs too. We ended up putting 3 nice seabass on ice, played around w/ nice sized snaps, and some spanish macks. The ride in was nice.

Here's our cleaning table at the end of the day...



We've had some great Fall fishing so far!

Crkr23

That's quite an accomplishment for the east coast, congratulations.

BottomBumpin

Very Cool! and good eats too!

chronicbreak

Nice fish.  Finally some cool weather…looking forward to some sheepshead fishing.

Crkr23

Have y'all tried the sheepshead ball jigs or hogball jigs for sheepshead on the east coast, I know they work well on the west coast.

Sea-Squatch

Crkr23 said:

Have y'all tried the sheepshead ball jigs or hogball jigs for sheepshead on the east coast, I know they work well on the west coast.

Yep. I bought some a few years a go, and I can't remember if we ever caught anything on them. 

minnowsnmonsters

Nice work!

cftsmoke

Very nice.  Still trying to figure out the groupers around here.

MtgMama

When you see the fuzzy caterpillars the Grouper spawn on the reefs..

capcioffi

We used to have a great fall run of grouper here 10-12 years ago. Ben or any one else that dives may remember. We had a grouper die off (if I can say that). There was video and I had some friends that dive tell me that there were dead grouper laying around on the bottom. Some speculated that it may be a bad water mass from the BP oil rig clean up chemicals, others speculated that it may have been a body of water with no oxygen (hypoxic zone "Dead Zones"), and some said it was a cargo ship that dumped crap overboard. Whatever it was, we have not had inshore grouper fishing like we used too. You used to be able and go out and target grouper in the fall on ledges in 70-100 foot off water and get fish. They come in to spawn during the fall and early winter. If anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear them. 

Sea-Squatch

capcioffi said:

We used to have a great fall run of grouper here 10-12 years ago. Ben or any one else that dives may remember. We had a grouper die off (if I can say that). There was video and I had some friends that dive tell me that there were dead grouper laying around on the bottom. Some speculated that it may be a bad water mass from the BP oil rig clean up chemicals, others speculated that it may have been a body of water with no oxygen (hypoxic zone "Dead Zones"), and some said it was a cargo ship that dumped crap overboard. Whatever it was, we have not had inshore grouper fishing like we used too. You used to be able and go out and target grouper in the fall on ledges in 70-100 foot off water and get fish. They come in to spawn during the fall and early winter. If anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear them. 

Yep, I remember those days. If the FS Forum archive went back that far, I'd have a lot of posts w/ pics of me and crew holding nearshore gags. I also remember hearing those same stories from divers about the grouper die off. I was talking about those days on the trip above, and that's what made us switch to grouper fishing.

dontezuma

@Sea-Squatch - I went out of Vilano and dove the Dorothy Louise last weekend and was surprised to see a few gags and a lot of sheeps.  I guess it's a good time of year.  I'm interested to get back out there on some of the nice ledges out of Mayport and see what's happening.