Last Updated on November 16, 2020 by Eric Bonneman
GROUPERS!!! GROUPERS!!! GROUPERS!!!
We are extremely excited for this time of year as it is when we get to catch our favorite species the Gag Grouper, and the best part is that we will mainly be targeting them with artificials as the water cools down. The later part of the year has always been the best time to throw large lipped plugs at these hard fighting fish and that is what we are going to be focused on until the end of the season on December 31st. Although we still like to get the fish fired up using live bait, once we’ve got them going, a well placed plug has proved to get the bite fired up even more. Throwing these plugs as far as you can past the rocks and ripping it as fast as possible back to you is the best way to work these plugs for the shallow water grouper. We have seen these fish come flying out of the water, eat it as your lifting the plug out of the water, and even hitting it as soon as it hits the surface. The bite is what it is all about.
Although most of our clients enjoy throwing plugs all day there are those that choose to take the easier, live bait route, which I have no problem with at all. The fish still fights just as hard and the best part is that your arms hurt from reeling in fish all day, not reeling in plugs. That’s just me being honest. The live bait fishing will of course slow down some in the coming month just because of the extreme cooling of the water that we will experience after some cold fronts. Luckily, a grouper still has to eat, and we the target them with dead bait. The slower presentation usually gets a good bite out of our favorite fish to target.
As for the inshore side of things, we have been running the mud boat on days that we have off from grouper fishing because of the weather and it has been producing better than we have seen in years. The object of fishing in the mud boat is to fish the lowest of the tides and only fish the deeper holes in the backcountry. These areas are the only areas the fish have enough water to still move around and feed so it produces what we all like to call “fishing in a barrel.”
These trips are so productive we usually only do half days because after the first few holes we have our limits of Speckled Trout and Redfish and our arms are tired from all that work.
Luckily, even though we have some extremely low tides this time of year we are still able to fish the backcountry in our Customized Caroline Skiff because it can run in less than 6inches of water as well. This makes a great platform for our larger groups to be able to experience the backcountry fishing as well.
The end of Grouper season is coming quickly and if you have been holding out on that trip of a lifetime there is no better time than now. Grouper season ends December 31stand currently my November is slam packed. For reading this whole newsletter fully I am offering a $50 off “END OF THE SEASON” Special if you book a grouper trip for December before Thanksgiving.
Be sure to give me call before you book online to give you the code for the discount.
Captain Louie Argiro
WWW.FLORIDAFISHINGADVENTURES.COM
LOU.FLORIDAFISHINGADVENTURES@GMAIL.COM
352-601-1963
