The grouper season in South Florida closes for four months on January 1, so time is running short to catch one of the hard-fighting, great-tasting fish.
The good news is that now is the best time of the year to catch grouper according to the legendary Capt. Bouncer Smith, who retired after 54 years of running fishing charters in Miami Beach.
Live-baiting around coral reefs and wrecks is the most popular way to catch grouper. Boaters can either anchor up-current or drift or troll with their baits.
“Probably the most consistently productive bait that is readily available is pinfish,” Smith says, noting they can be caught on hook and line or in a pinfish trap. “With that being said, if you caught live ballyhoo and slow-trolled them in 15 to 50 feet of water, wherever you find a reef edge, they’re very, very effective.”
But, adds Smith, there’s an even better live bait for grouper — a baby bonito of 1-3 pounds.
They can be caught trolling a homemade, Sabiki-like rig consisting of some small spoons and bonefish jigs with a small trolling lead in front of them. Meanwhile, Smith says, your grouper fishing rod is already rigged with a 9/0 triple-strength circle hook and a 120-pound leader about 20 feet long, tied to a three-way swivel with a 1- to 3-pound weight attached to a short piece of monofilament tied to the bottom of the swivel. His preferred mainline is 80- or 100-pound monofilament because the line stretches without breaking when you apply maximum pressure on a grouper to prevent it from heading back into a reef or wreck.
“You’re trolling those little lures around all the wrecks out to 200 feet, and at some point, you’ll catch baby bonitos, which are very prolific in the fall,” Smith says. “As soon as you catch a baby bonito, you hook it through the upper lip and you drop it down on the upstream side of the wreck. And you better have all the drag you can afford.
“That live bonito is the No. 1 black grouper food you can drop down. It’s a great bait anytime, but the little bonitos are very common in the fall and the black groupers get common in the fall.”
Another tried but true, but seldom used tactic that works for grouper is to troll dead baits along coral reefs, which was perfected more than 50 years ago by Capt. Buddy Carey of the famed Pier 5 charter fleet in Miami. Smith says the technique is still effective and not that difficult to master.
“The grouper see something going by that looks like it might be edible and they’re out to get it,” Smith says. “They come charging up off the reef.”
Smith trolls skirted ballyhoo, using a planer to get the bait near the bottom where the grouper hang out. A planer is a small, rectangular, weighted piece of metal that is attached to the mainline of a fishing outfit at one end and to a long leader at the other end.
When it is deployed, the planer, which comes in different sizes that travel at different depths, glides down through the water behind the boat. Depending on the size of the planer and how much fishing line is put out, the bait can be presented at a depth that will attract the attention of any fish in that zone.
Smith rigs the ballyhoo on a 7/0 triple-strength 3417 Mustad J hook at the end of a 100-foot length of 100-pound monofilament leader attached to the planer. He uses dual-speed Penn International reels, size 30 or larger. In low gear, the reel can pull a grouper away from a structure. Then, the high gear setting enables an angler to get the fish quickly to the boat, before a shark can bite it.
“The grouper on occasion will come up and hit the ballyhoo on top of the water, but basically you want the bait about 10 feet off the bottom,” Smith says. “If it’s real close to the bottom, they’ve got the advantage of getting back into the bottom. And if it’s too high, then a lot of them will say, ‘Oh, that one’s too far away.’ But generally speaking, they come charging up to get that morsel going by.”
Smith says that anglers can learn how to precisely troll for groupers by practicing with a planer over a sandy bottom. When the bait starts hitting the sand, mark the fishing line and record the RPMs of the engines. The next time you troll, run at the same speed and let out the same amount of line, and you’ll know how far down your bait is running.
The grouper season closure, which runs through April 30 in Atlantic waters, was implemented in 2010 to allow the populations of black, gag, and red grouper to increase in number and in size, as well as to protect the fish during their spawning seasons.
The minimum size limit for black and gag grouper is 24 inches and reds must be 20 inches. Anglers can keep a total of three grouper per day, but only one can be a black or a gag. The other two, or all three, can be red grouper.
Follow Capt. Bouncer’s advice and you’ll be able to enjoy several delicious meals of fresh grouper for the holiday season. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until May.