On a trolling hookup, keep the boat moving to help pull fish away from structure.

Be sure you fully understand your depthfinder. Color units seem to help in distinguishing live bottom, baitfish and even grouper. Select the proper gain and sonar frequency (200 kHz has an edge in target definition in shallow water; 50kHz is what most guys use for deep offshore waters). If you can’t pick up bottom detail at speed, you may need to reposition your transducer. Cavitation can dog a transom-mount unit, so you might look at a thru-hull or in-hull mounting. It’s not expensive or terribly complicated to adjust all this; discuss options with your local electronics dealer.

You may have the best luck finding a grouper spot by running a slow-speed search pattern at a selected depth. In the 30-foot depths off Manatee, Sarasota and Pinellas Counties and in the 60-foot depths off the Panhandle you’re likely to cruise over nice areas of live bottom—and legal gags. Captain Terry Dowden of Carrabelle has lots of “last stop” numbers well within state waters that are always worth fishing and Capt. Bob Bryant has some spots just on the limit of federal waters off St. Petersburg.

Another option for finding winter grouper is to just go fishing. Deep cuts like Tampa Bay’s Mullet Key ship channel (a 40-foot-plus trench), Yankeetown’s Cross-Florida Barge Canal and the deep hole north of Egmont Key are all known grouper spots, and are productive in cooler months. Almost all the passes south of Tampa Bay—Boca Grande, Redfish and others—hold groupers in winter. Keep in mind there’s some fishing pressure in the passes, and you might find a lot of sub-legal fish.

If you find an isolated rock a few miles offshore, don’t stop and fish it as soon as you mark it on your GPS and fishfinder. Be stealthy. Take time to learn your exact drift near the spot and quietly anchor within easy casting distance. Keep the noise to a minimum, drift your bait back to the fish and you’ll soon have strikes. Tommy Hines recommends using the lightest line you’re comfortable with and free-lining baits back toward the structure. You’ll want enough backbone in your tackle to get that first fish to the boat quickly, as you don’t want to spook the other grouper on the spot with a big thrashing battle. Be mindful that a little rockpile, smaller than 100 square feet, may hold only a few legal fish. Try not to over-fish that spot, and take only a few keepers before trying another number.

In nearshore channels, trolling big-lipped plugs works well. Bob Bryant picks up his trolling speed to about 8 knots to get Mann’s Stretch 30s down deep along the edges of the Tampa Bay ship channels. Tommy Hines uses the Stretch 15s at about 4 knots in the 20-foot cuts within eyeshot of Cedar Key. Crystal River angler John Patrick often casts shallow-diving plugs like the Long-A Bomber to the very shallow rocks off St. Martin’s Keys in the fall and winter. These rocks are real skeg-busters, with tops just a few feet from the surface at moderate tides, but ev-en in the 10- to 12-foot depths, they can be loaded with nice keeper gags.

There’s no doubt that live baits work best on grouper during cooler months, in both inshore and offshore waters. The only problem is availability. Bob Bryant likes to get the fish “started” on cut sardines and move along to the seasonally scarce live baits as the larger grouper move into the eating zone. Tommy Hines likes to start with the offshore version of FishBites, a synthetic bait product whose toughness keeps the smaller grunts and seabass from pecking it off. In cold water, less expensive frozen or synthetic baits exude far more smell than live bait and get the predators active more quickly. Some offshore veterans in winter even slowly squash their frozen baits under a boot heel, before lowering them down. That makes for a messy deck, but more fish landed. Buying frozen bait also saves time.

Changing your grouper game plan shouldn’t be difficult. The rules are essentially the same; it’s just that you’ll have to get tuned into a different channel. Grouper fishing has always involved the landing of smaller grouper, grunts and snappers and then sorting out the keepers. I can’t imagine going out and catching only keeper grouper. The hunt, chase and catching of other, lesser species is all part of the grouper fisherman’s day. You’ll certainly catch more short fish in shallower or closer-to-shore waters, but the fun’s still there—and you’ll usually feed your hungry crew.

Capt. Tommy Hines, displaying a chunky gag, says there's more grouper habitat within nine miles of shore than many anglers realize.

FS