Mangrove snapper, a.k.a. black snapper in the Florida Panhandle. Big ones like this lurk around artificial reefs out of Destin and Pensacola, among other ports.
November 08, 2024
By Gabrielle Barnes
Hidden Gems : Roads less traveled & waters less fished in Florida. Florida Sportsman magazine’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. This installment highlights mangrove snapper fishing off the Panhandle.Gulf Mangroves When all the red snapper hoopla dies down, it’s time to test yourself against those big, wary mangroves.
More Hidden Gems Florida Sportsman's 'Hidden Gems.' Mangrove snapper, or as us Panhandle folk call them, “black snapper,” are part of the Lutjanidae (snapper) family and with over 100 different species in the line-up, they are atop my list. These tasty fish can be caught throughout the entire state of Florida and are a guide favorite both inshore and offshore here in the Panhandle.
Mangrove snappers are batch spawners, releasing eggs multiple times throughout the spawning season. Fertilized eggs hatch within a day or two, and the larvae drift in the plankton before settling into juvenile habitats like our bays and intracoastal waterways. They will remain in these estuaries for 1 or 2 years before venturing into deeper waters and making their way back into the Gulf. When they grow to around 12 to 14 inches and they can handle the challenges of open water, they start their transition back to the Gulf in search of a reef, wreck, or rocks to call home. They can live in the wild up to 21 years.
You can find mangroves on just about any type of structure offshore. They are not picky to the type. But, mangrove snapper can be more difficult to catch than their closely related cousin, the red snapper. Mangroves seem to be much smarter, or they can see a whole lot better, or both may be true. I have spent many days on the water trying to master the art of catching big mangroves.
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You can absolutely catch them bottom fishing your normal Carolina rig with live bait, but if my main goal is to catch mangroves, I am going to have plenty of chum and be rigged up with freelines on spinning gear.
Let’s start with chum. There are many options and this is more of a preference thing than anything else. Chum blocks, small chunks of cut bait, or live chum, all of it works to bring those snappers off the wreck and to the boat. I prefer small chunks of Boston mackerel, which mainly started because I kept forgetting to bring my chum bag in the boat when I was ready to go to a new spot! I love live chum but sometimes when freelining a live bait, it doesn’t cooperate and go where I want it to go, so I will usually start with chunking small pieces of cut bait and throwing out a handful at a time to see what comes up. Chumming is also heavily dependent on not having too much current. You want the chum to get down to the wreck and provide a line of free food straight to the boat. A lot of times if the current is too strong, the chum will make it down far past the area you were aiming for.
Cut Boston mackerel makes excellent chum. Get a stream of chunks drifting toward the reef, watch for fish, then hook a slightly larger chunk and freeline it. So now that we have an ideal current, we see fish on our sonar, have thrown some chum in and notice some fish are coming up in it… it’s time to catch them! Assuming we are fishing for the big mamas, I am going to have a Penn Spinfisher 4500 or 5500 rigged up on an 8-foot Shimano Teramar Extra Heavy and Extra Fast Rod, light tip with enough stout to land that 12-pound fish I am after. I will start with 10 feet of 30- or 40-pound fluorocarbon tied straight to a 3/0 light wire circle hook. Mangrove snapper eyesight is out of this world, so use a long leader and bury that hook in your bait. I like to cut a chunk of Boston mackerel that’s bigger than my chum and on the next handful I throw in, I will toss my bait to drift naturally down with it. The most important thing here is a natural drift. Just because you see those fish, doesn’t mean you toss it out there and close the bail. You should keep your bail open and feed that line out, so it is moving through the water column just like the rest of the chum. Once your line starts peeling off the spool, engage your bail and it’s on!
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Sounds easy, right? It is, until you see all the fish under the boat, and they are eating all the chum but turning their nose at your bait. This is when you start trying to figure out what you should change. Is the bait too big? Your hook too exposed? Your drift natural?
If you have all those things dialed to the best of your ability and still no luck, it’s time to downsize. I will go as far down as 20-pound fluorocarbon and a 1/0 hook to get the bite.
This is perfect if we are catching 3-pound fish but when you get those fish that are 20 inches and up, you might get the bite, but you will have your work cut out on landing them.
I have spent countless hours staring at mangroves under my boat and trying everything I could think of, and chumming with a free line has always been the most consistent way to get the numbers and sizes of fish I wanted. Try something new this year—bring the chum and spinning rods and buckle up for a visual day of frustration and fun all wrapped up in one.
