Florida Gulf Grouper
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 7:48 amAfter a couple of weeks of windy weather, I was happy to see that this weekend was calling for light wind and seas less then one foot. Sunday morning my brother in law Chris, my friends Kevin and Will and I headed out to some Grouper fishing.
Gag Grouper are already closed in federal water, and will be closed in state waters as of June 1st. Red grouper are still open in federal waters but there is talk of closing them as well, so I wanted to get some fishing in before the closures go into affect.
After catching some live Green Backs for bait we head out about 27 miles SW o
f Clearwater Pass. I was fishing areas lime stone bottom I had never fished before but figured they would be holding Red Grouper. It was calm so I decided to drift around the two spots. On the first pass all four of us hooked up with red Grouper, but Will landed the only one over the 20 inch min. We drift back and forth over the holes for about 3.5 hours and caught 8 keeper size red Grouper, and throw back 60 to 70 that were under the slot size. We also caught two nice size Grunt. The live Green Backs did out fish the Frozen one’s which we also brought along for bait.
While trolling for King Mackerel inside of State Water’s on the way home Kevin caught a 24 inch Gag Grouper on a Spoon, which was a nice bonus, to a good day of fishing.
Gag Grouper are already closed in federal water, and will be closed in state waters as of June 1st. Red grouper are still open in federal waters but there is talk of closing them as well, so I wanted to get some fishing in before the closures go into affect.
After catching some live Green Backs for bait we head out about 27 miles SW o
- Days catch
- 52211.jpg (22.5 KiB) Viewed 3269 times
While trolling for King Mackerel inside of State Water’s on the way home Kevin caught a 24 inch Gag Grouper on a Spoon, which was a nice bonus, to a good day of fishing.
Blackened snapper fer din-din