Captain's Report - March/April, 2007

by Capt. Dave Mistretta

State water grouper: We caught a few decent sized groupers in state waters, before this recent blast of cold air. Thursday sea conditions were not favorable to head far offshore. My original game plan was to fish deeper waters for amberjack. Strong winds and big seas forced us to change our game plan, after pounding head on into 5 foot seas and blustery west winds. Our decision to fish the edge of state and federal waters paid off with a couple of hefty gag groupers.

Tactics: We didn't catch many fish, but the keepers we did land were impressive. Both fish averaged about 13 pounds. We were located on some ledges due east of the Rube Allen Reef. There was plenty of life showing up on the sonar keeping our confidence level high, during the slow periods. All at once, after about 10 minutes of sitting over the structure the action fired up. We broke two huge fish off when they hit live pinfish and took our rigs into the rocks. After re-rigging heavier leaders we hit jackpot.

Two more pinfish were sent to the bottom and gobbled up by the hefty groupers almost immediately. The vibration from the giant pinfish was too much for the big grouper to resist. A minute later we caught a 24 inch keeper on a dead sardine. After the short spurt of action the bite stopped and it was quite again. This is typical winter time occurrences, since water temps are in the fifties down on the bottom, making the fish quite finicky at times.

Pinfish location: We caught our pinfish a few miles west of Clearwater Pass. The bottom was covered with these great grouper baits. Monitoring the sonar while heading west is how the big school of bait was detected. You will often find schools of these larger pinfish settled on patchy hard bottom during these winter months. They leave the bays when the water gets too cool and reside offshore until spring.

Captain's Report - March/April, 2007

by Capt. Dave Mistretta

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