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© St. Petersburg Times, published June 22, 2002
Warm weather and the coming of a full moon mean it's time to target tasty mangrove snapper offshore.
During the latter part of summer, big mangrove snapper gather in large schools for spawning.
While they can be somewhat difficult to catch during the day, once the sun sets they become more active. Wrecks and big ledges in 40 or more feet of water usually hold the biggest concentrations. But just about any rock pile or structure might be worth trying.
Schooling snapper usually show up as a large blob above the structure on your depth recorder. On ledges, they are most often seen hanging above the peak of the drop-off.
After a few snapper hunting trips, you will develop a good eye for just what they look like on your electronics and should be able to distinguish between them and other unwanted species, such as grunts, porgies and sea bass.
Boat positioning is important when setting up on a prospective snapper spot. Ideally, you should be up current so the chum drifts toward the fish. This will draw them away from the structure, making them easier to land.
Once in position, put several large mesh chum bags in the water. In water less than 50 feet deep, simply hanging the chum bag from the stern is all you need to do, but in deep water, the addition of a mid depth chum bag really helps get the snapper biting.
This can be accomplished by adding weight to a mesh bag or by using a weighted chum cage. The cage is preferable to keep sharks from stealing your whole chum block in one bite.
Once the snapper smell the chum, they will move toward the boat, often rising to the surface, even in deep water. Once they come to the top, they are relatively easy to fool.
Using a 12- to 15-pound spinning rod rigged with a small hook and no leader, drift a small piece of cut bait or small live bait back into the chum line. Avoid moving your bait once it starts its drift. The idea is to make your bait look like the rest of the chum drifting in the tide.
Once the slack pulls out of your line, set the hook by lifting the rod quickly. When the snapper are biting on top, you can usually catch your limit (five per person) quickly.
To target the bigger snapper, you need to get through the school and down to the bottom. Try rigging a one-ounce slip sinker 3 feet above your hook and using a slightly larger bait, such as a pinfish. This is where the big ones are.
The deeper you go, the bigger the mangrove snapper. Some five- to six-pounders are close to shore in places such as the Pasco #2 reef, but most are in the two- to three-pound range. Twenty miles out there are more five pounders, and in 100 feet of water or more, five pounders are the norm and eight- and 10-pound snapper are taken with some regularity. In deep water, red snapper and muttons are also a possibility.
Other species you might encounter when night fishing this way include sharks, grouper and the occasional blackfin tuna.
Keep an eye on the weather when headed out at night. Summer weather is generally calm and enjoyable but our current weather pattern has made prediction a little less reliable.
-- Ed Walker charters out of Palm Harbor. Call (727) 944-3474 or e-mail TarponEd@aol.com.