Outdoors

Offshore: Kingfish, red grouper keep anglers' lines busy

If you can stand the heat, fishing has been good for the past few weeks.

By DAVE MISTRETTA, Times correspondent
Published July 20, 2007

If you can stand the heat, fishing has been good for the past few weeks.

What's hot: Kingfish availability remains steady from the spring run, and we have had some impressive catches on occasion. Fishing in 80-plus-feet of water, we caught three fish over the 30-pound mark in a matter of minutes. Most of our kingfish were caught on free-lined threadfin herring. We simply toss a threadfin behind the boat each time we anchor over our bottom spots for grouper. Some stops will not produce any pelagic action, while others will be filled with nonstop action.

Small mahi mahi (dolphin fish) have been visiting the back of our boat as well when we fish in depths of 90 feet or more. These little scrappers will jump repeatedly once hooked, creating some great action on ultralight tackle. Most are too small to keep by my standards, so we release them unharmed.

Bottom fishing: Red grouper fishing has been stable throughout the summer. Their sizes have not been huge, but good numbers of keepers have been brought up on a regular basis. The action seems to start at depths of about 80 feet of water and deeper. On many occasions we have met our one-per-person limit with ease. This allows us to target other species.

Gag grouper have not been as common this summer as in the past. The gags we have caught have been few and far between, but impressive in size. This week we boated a few fish that were more than 15 pounds. Hopefully we will see greater numbers move our way toward the end of the summer.

More action: You can always count on a few barracuda loitering over the many wrecks that sit off our coastline. We have been having a ball with these toothy critters each morning. Slow-trolling live baits have resulted in multiple hookups. Be sure to employ the downriggers to cover all parts of the water column. On some days the surface baits get hit the most; other days the deeper baits will get the majority of hits.

[Last modified July 20, 2007, 03:01:02]