Florida's Hidden Gems: Deep-Drop Fishing in the Keys

• Hidden Gems: Roads less traveled & waters less fished in Florida. Florida Sportsman’s 'Hidden Gems’ project in the August-September 2024 issue featured 14 hotspots for Florida’s hunters and anglers, from the Keys to the Panhandle.

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Use local knowledge, the nautical charts advise us, when navigating around shifting shoals and poorly lit channels. That’s also good advice for planning fishing and hunting expeditions around Florida.

Florida Sportsman’s team of field editors, who contribute monthly Action Spotter columns appearing in every issue, is 
well-represented in our collection of more than a dozen short “local flavor” stories, featured as "Hidden Gems" in the August-September issue. Many are fishing guides; all are long-time residents of their respective regions. We’ve leaned also on seasoned Florida reporters and even a few readers bringing news of treasures at sea and afield.—Editor Jeff Weakley

The Deep Drop, Florida Keys

The ocean floor around the Florida coast has been heavily fished and mapped, but there are still gems to be found. Yes, even a few secrets. Adventurous anglers willing to spend a bit on the right gear catch interesting and delicious bottom fish at depths which once seemed unfishable: 500, 600, even 1,000 feet.

This is deep-drop fishing.

Deep-dropping is as gear-specific as anything you’ll find. Right up there with kite-fishing for sailfish or fly fishing for trout. There’ve been exciting developments in tackle, like cordless electric reels; tiny underwater lights; snap-and-go leader rigs. Certainly the evolution of sonar has played a huge role—we can spy pods of bait, small rocks, 700 feet below our boats. Get into it, and you’ll discover there’s a lot more to it than simply tying on a huge sinker and sending a chunk of bait to the bottom.

Earlier this summer, I fished aboard Capt. Rush Maltz’s 34 SeaVee out of Oceans Edge Marina, Key West.

Golden tilefish—a headliner of the Keys deepdrop fishery, reaching 20 pounds or more—had been closed by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The recreational fleet had reached its annual catch limit.

The related, but smaller, blueline tile was still open—and Rush and his buddy Casey Villone had some strategies to target those… plus a few surprises.

We were also field-testing PENN’s brand-new Fathom Electric series reels, introduced this summer. Ben Joyce, PENN Senior Product Manager, had brought two, an 80 series spooled with 50-pound braided line and a 50 series spooled with 40. The Fathom Electrics are lever-drag, level-wind reels, an interesting combination and practical for this fishery. The levelwind is extremely convenient for laying line evenly on the spool, important when you’re bringing up hundreds of yards each drop!

Crucially, the Fathom not only has its own integrated motor, but its own power source, a small, rechargeable 12-volt lithium battery. No need to bolt anything to the reel, no need to negotiate power cords in the cockpit.

The handle can be used for manual retrieve—pressing a recessed button (normally the shift button from single to two-speed) engages the handle. An exposed button disengages it… and you’ll definitely want it disengaged when you hit retrieve using the motor, lest the handle smash your knuckles.

Torque ratings are impressive: 40 pounds of pulling power for the Fathom Electric 80; 35 pounds for the 50 (a smaller 30-series is also available). Menu settings allow for customizing things like automatic stop when the rig gets close, so you don’t crank a swivel into the rodtip.

Ben had mounted the reels on 6-foot PENN Ally roller guide rods rated for 50-80 pound line class. The rods seemed well-matched to the Fathom reels, with bent-butts that make for trouble-free fishing out of the gunnel rodholders. Not only do bent-butt rods help keep lines away from the boat, but the angle—closer to the horizontal—minimizes the chance of fishing line getting wrapped around the tip. They are ideal for drift-fishing, which is definitely what you’re doing when you’re fishing 60 stories down.

In deep-drop fishing, no-stretch braided poly fishing line is essential for two reasons. One, it cuts through the water with minimal friction, helping you get baits to the bottom and keep them there without requiring unwieldly weight.

Secondly, the braided line efficiently relays bites to the angler and delivers hook-setting pressure. Monofilament stretches 10 percent or more—with 600 feet out, a fish taking a bait on mono wouldn’t transmit so much as a tap to the rodtip. With braid, you have a direct connection and can react as needed to bites.

The braid is so effective, in fact, that deepdrop anglers commonly add a monofilament topshot as a cushion to mitigate against pulled hooks. To the Berkley X5 braid on the electrics, Rush added a 40-foot top shot of 50-pound-test monofilament using back-to-back uni knots.

“That gives it a little stretch—straight to the braid pulls a lot of hooks, especially tilefish,” he said.

Pre-rigged leader assemblies can be purchased at ocean-oriented tackle shops, but making your own isn’t difficult. Plus, it allows for customization. The captain’s friend Casey rigged up 5-hook leaders using 130-pound-test monofilament—a little lighter than some of the pre-rigged leaders commonly seen on shelves.

“Obviously the fish aren’t super leader shy in these depths—it’s real dark down there—but I think at some point they’ll shy away from heavy. You get more bites going a little lighter,” Casey explained.

The connections were nice and clean. They were all crimped, which made sense to me, as knots are tricky in 130-pound and may bind and contribute to tangles. Casey used double-barrel sleeves and allowed for about 20 inches of line between each three-way swivel. Off each swivel, he crimped 16-inch leads to the hook, saying 16 inches is about right for tilefish, but that when groupers are the primary target, he makes the leads a little longer.

Hooks were 12/0 circles. Casey had added a plastic glow squid to each one, providing a little visual and tactile attraction. Real squid constitute an excellent bait—Casey alternated with a squid on one hook, then a chunk of bonito on another.

“Squid are great for tilefish,” he said. “And bonito is a good, tough bait, hard for fish to pull off the hook.”

On the subject of visual attraction, deep-drop anglers typically add a light—or lights—somewhere on the rig.

At the snap swivel off each rod, Casey added a Lindgren Pitman Duralite Diamond in the multi-colored “Disco” pattern. These tiny, powerful LED lights activate automatically when submerged.

Anchoring each rig was a lead stick weight. Four pounds was the call for the conditions, but sometimes they’ll use heavier. Deepdrop weights are expensive—three or four bucks a pound.

Once we were all set, I looked at the captain’s Furuno sonar while he motored us into position for a drift. On his left 16-inch screen, Rush zoomed in the bottom view to the last 150 feet, magnifying the features down below.

I asked about his transducer and he said it’s a low-medium CHIRP flush-mounted forward of the steps in the SeaVee running surface.

“I’m looking at density,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Deeper red equals more dense, and I’m seeing some bait. We’re fishing over some rubble bottom here.”

The low rubble is good for blueline tilefish, he said, “but the goldens like mud.”

Golden tilefish, as mentioned, were closed, and so the goal was to steer clear of their homes.

Possibly we’d find a snowy grouper, Rush explained, or some of the other deepwater groupers, all of which are structure-oriented, like most groupers. The captain said he knew of spots where they’re dependable.

Snowy grouper bag limit is one per boat, and at the time the season was open. We caught a small one, which was a little disappointing. A 20- or 30-pounder would’ve been a real prize, with their famously white, delicate fillets. One of the best, in my opinion.

Yes, it’s bait fishing, and yes, the rod sits in the holder. But, fish with guys like Rush and Casey and you’ll see there’s definitely some art to the deepdrop.

The window of optimal current is for sure an important variable.

The captain’s Furuno GPS showed us drifting less than a knot, indicating extremely light current, a surprise for this depth along the Florida Atlantic coast. At 10 or 15 miles offshore, 4 or 5 knots is pretty common when the axis of the Gulf Stream current moves closer to shore.

“When it’s pushing that hard, we’re doing something else,” said Rush.

We fished with the drags backed off and the spool tensioner slightly engaged—just enough to prevent overrun as we drifted slowly away from bottom contact.

“You want to let the line pay out as we drift,” Rush explained. “If you come tight, you’re more likely to snag. Imagine the baits laying out along the bottom—that’s what you want the fish to see.”

Interpreting the cadence of bumps on the rodtip, Rush and Casey were both pretty accurate with their calls: Blueline tilefish have a particular way of biting, and fighting, with a lot of thumping. Groupers, they said, more or less just pull straight and hard.

We caught several blueline tilefish. We also caught blackbelly rosefish, in the scorpionfish family, mysterious and delicious, smallish gems of the deep.

Being that we were off Key West, we had plenty of other options to add to the fish box, so after a while we put away the deepdrop gear and headed to the shallow reefs.

Stuff You Don’t Want to Hear—But Should

Deep-drop fishing is definitely a way to find “hidden gems,” but there’s a hitch: Today’s deepdrop angler must be attuned to the regulations and seasons which govern the fishery. And that can be a moving target. Closures for species like golden tilefish, snowy grouper and blueline tilefish may be announced pretty early in the fishing year, if authorities determine annual catch levels have been met. You really have to keep up with what’s open, what’s closed, via the federal and Florida websites and/or the Fish Rules app.

Thirty years ago, deep-drop fishing was kind of a Wild West, with little or no management. Today it’s governed by a range of fishing regulations. It can get a little complicated, but like a lot of things, the rules are probably for the best. Not a lot is known about the deepwater fishes, their growth rates, their spawning habits.

One thing we do know is, bottom-hugging fish hooked at great depths (80 feet or more) commonly suffer barotrauma as they’re reeled up. The rapid pressure change tends to pop swim bladders, squeeze organs, and render many fish unable to return. Yes, there are weird exceptions, like the apparently invincible swordfish, which can whack a bait in 1,800 feet of water, charge to the surface, leap 10 feet into the air, and dump your spool on the way back into the abyss. Mainly, though, the bread and butter of deep-drop fish—the tilefish, the groupers, the snappers—they’re vulnerable. This isn’t like redfish and snook fishing, where you can catch, release, repeat.

To help us avoid wasteful discards, or “floaters,” in recent years fisheries managers have established rules for carrying descending devices. Descending device is a catch-all for weighted, self-releasing clamps or probes designed to return a grouper, snapper or other fish to their original atmospheric pressure, or at least close enough to recover.

That said, there are limits to the effectiveness of descending devices. On reefs in 80 to 200 feet of water—where most of us do our reef fishing—they’re pretty darn effective. Out at “deep drop” depths? When a managed deepwater reef fish—such as golden tilefish or snowy grouper--is closed, the ethical choice as an angler is to avoid hooking them in the first place. That may mean carefully avoiding their habitat—or it could mean putting away the deepdrop gear until next year.

It’s fun to catch those deepwater gems, and they’re certainly treasures on the table. But we need to do our part to conserve the resource, keep them out there for the next season. Some of those fish stocks, as well, are over-due for a shift in allocation. In South Atlantic waters, about nine-tenths of the annual catch of snowy grouper and golden tilefish are reserved for commercial fishermen. Shifting some of that toward the ranks of recreational anglers only makes sense, as interest in the fishery grows. Good project for CCA Florida or other advocacy groups.

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