The deep water closure of grouper is now over and we have been doing VERY well on scamp grouper, red grouper and even some big trigger fish out there past 140-150ft of water all the way out to around 200ft of water. The scamp grouper bite best past around 140ft of water and we like small live pinfish for them in the 4-5inch range or the 4-6oz hammered silver diamond jigs bounced just around the bottom nearly touching bottom or squid strips seem to work well too. Scamp love the ledges, potholes or hard ‘swiss cheese’ style bottom up to around 350-400 foot of water. The deeper you go the more often you see larger scamp and they are one of my most favorite eating grouper for sure.
Right now on our 12 hour extreme, 39 hour or the 44 hour full moon trips or the longer range flying HUB 1 or 2 private charters like 10 or 12 hours you have a great shot at targeting these great eating scamp grouper, triggerfish and the super fat deep water red grouper. Plus, were seeing lots of big pelagics out there past 120-140ft of water with big kingfish in the 35-45lb range and plentiful blackfin tuna. Most of the pelagics are being caught on the flat lines or the vertical jigs around sunrise or sunset this past week aboard our long range fishing boats. However, we are picking a few tuna and some smaller ‘schoolie’ sized kingfish on the trollers too. The sailfish are around the area as well a few boats in the area have spotted a few and one boat did hook up this past week on a rouge sailfish just off our coast around 40 miles from shore.
The mangrove snapper bite has been a little soft as of late but we have been able to pick up some nice quality fish working hard for them and sticking and moving until we find a cooperative pile of those great fish. The vermillion snapper however have been super large and very willing to chew for us in the deeper 130-150ft of water areas. The red grouper are finishing their spawn and they are slowly starting to cooperate shallower, but the majority of the fish seem to be biting best from 110-160ft of water still for now.
