Live bait on a ledge produced a red grouper for Ron Rincones and Dan Filakosky.

The skipper cocked his head from side to side as he tried to watch three fishermen and a fishfinder simultaneously. He was busier than a one-eyed cat trying to watch two mice holes at the same time.

He eyed me as I dropped a live sailors choice almost 200 feet straight down on a rockpile about 30 miles east of Sebastian Inlet. When the sinker reached the bottom and I cranked a couple of turns, I knew that I had hooked either the bottom or a big grouper. When the bottom started moving, I knew it had to be a grouper—probably a warsaw.

“Get ’em up! Get ’em up! Get ’em up!” Capt. Ron “Rico” Rincones shouted, sounding like the trail boss on the old Rawhide western TV show.

“Reel! Reel! Reel!” he yelled.

We both knew that I had only seconds to get the fish turned and moving upward or it would swim back into the rocks—where even the 27-foot Sea Aye’s turbo-charged diesel couldn’t budge it. Then it would put the coup de grâce on me and break off. Once I got the fish coming up, though, I knew that I could start pumping, but the first few seconds are critical and all I could do was crank like mad.

It felt like another warsaw, so I grunted and strained until I finally got the fish coming my way. Maybe a gray grouper, sow red snapper or a big amberjack, I thought. But, it had hit like a warsaw, a very forgiving fish. If an angler jerks the bait out of a warsaw’s mouth, it will come back for a second helping—unlike grays and snappers, which tend to slink away after feeling resistance. This fish returned for leftovers.

Later, Capt. Rico explained another reason why he’d wanted me to get the fish up. “If it goes into the rocks and breaks off, it will turn the other fish off and shut down the bite at this site completely,” he said. I believed him because I had seen it happen a couple of times that day.

“If the fish pulls the hook and gets off right away, it usually doesn’t shut down the bite, but if it breaks off or runs into a wreck or ledge, it shuts down the fishing,” Rincones said. “There’s definitely a conversation taking place down there among the fish.” When that happens, the captain just puts the boat in gear and throttles on to the next of his many honeyholes.

After I pumped and reeled the warsaw to the stern, the skipper lipped it with his gaff, hauled it aboard, quickly measured it, tagged it and then released it. Before the day was over, we would catch, tag and release five more warsaws and keep our limit of one per boat. However, one is enough if it weighs 20 pounds or more, especially if you have a couple of nice red grouper and an amberjack in the chiller for dinner to go along with it.

Along much of the Florida coastline, warsaw grouper are associated with very deep water. They’re also considered pretty rare. I’ve caught them on electric reel gear in 500 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. But here, on the rocky ledges off Sebastian Inlet, we were fishing at half that depth and with no power assistance. Just elbow grease and determination. Our success says something about the incredible variety available to anglers fishing these waters.

Bottom fishermen out of Sebastian and nearby Fort Pierce and Canaveral have access to a wealth of fishy structure. There are wrecks, the 21 Fathom Ridge, 27 Fathom Ridge, and an area of steep bottom structure in about 250 feet known alternately as the Cones or the Steeples. Deepwater fishing around the Cones is especially good. This limestone fault extends from Fort Pierce to due east of Daytona Beach. The formations, some of which have live coral, vary from 15 to 90 feet in height.

Also of interest to anglers are Bethel Shoals, the Northeast Grounds, the 50-Foot Ridge and numerous other ridges and bars. Divers have found petrified wood on the 27-Fathom Line and some experts speculate that this could have been the old Florida coastline thousands of years ago.

All these spots and others are listed on Waterproof Chart #124F, available at local tackle shops or from International Sailing Supply in Punta Gorda, 1-800-423-9026. A few more sites worth checking out are included with this article, too. The fishing grounds closest to Sebastian seem to get less pressure than those off Daytona Beach and Port Canaveral to the north and Fort Pierce and Stuart to the south. In fact, on our last trip out, we didn’t see a single bottom-fishing boat, though we did see some trolling boats that had come all the way up from Stuart to catch sailfish.

Joining us on this bottom-fishing slugfest were Walt Hudson and Dan Filakosky. Filakosky is a husky young man who was once skipper of a partyboat out of Port Canaveral. Hudson, whose specialty is deep-jigging, has caught more bottom fish than any recreational angler I know. When he is not fishing, he is talking fishing or rigging baits at Jumbo Sports in Winter Park. Rincones, a 30-year veteran skipper who lives in Palm Bay and charters out of Sebastian, kept us on fish all day. He used a 10-inch, 1,000-watt color depthfinder and a loran to locate and identify fish.