We had our first nearshore party boat trip since the start of red snapper season this past week since a corporate client booked the boat for a 10 hour all day and we hit around 80-110ft of water and fishing was hot. They caught some nice red grouper and good numbers of them on the 60lb leader, 6oz leads and the 7ot hooks with long strips of squid. You can even double snell around a 4ot circle above the 7ot hook to allow two hooks in that strip of squid to enable you to also hook the smaller snapper that go to nibble at your red grouper bait. We also saw large numbers of big lane snapper in that depth and they love the squid pieces or the live shrimp. Mixed in the plentiful big lane snapper were some nice vermillion, occasional yellowtail and the rarely caught this time of year hogfish.
It was a great trip with good numbers and solid fishing. We have also seen similar catches aboard our private charter boats around the deepest near shore waters. The action seems to be good out deep near shore if you don’t want to make the run to the red snapper depths past 140-150ft of water. The pelagic action near shore is pretty slow, but we are seeing the occasional mackerel while trolling out and back from our 5 hour and 39 hour fishing trips.
