Sarasota

November 17th, 2008

Fishing is still good but the coming cold front may slow it down. A large variety of fish is showing up on the Bay and Gulf. Large bait-fish are hard to find offshore, but trolling spoons and plugs is doing the job for King mackerel and Spanish mackerel. Smaller white bait has been plentiful along the beaches and will work if you can net them.

Some nice grouper and snapper are starting to show at the fifty foot depth offshore. Live bait is best including shrimp for the snapper.

We have been finding redfish, large trout, pompano, mackerel, bluefish and flounder on the bay. The redfish have mainly been in the deeper water, like Zwicks canal and most of the other fish have been on the grass-flats.

Hot Grouper spots!

Like any place else, most of our area anglers are eager to share when, where and how they caught fish, but grouper is the exception! When fishing in saltwater, it is possible to catch a nice grouper any place in the Bay or Gulf.

Don't expect anglers to give you their hot spots! Hot spots are what we call grouper stacked-up on the bottom. They also could be in, under or around a structure. In other words, it is a lot of keeper size grouper in a very small area.

An experienced grouper digger will take a few nice fish, put the spot, if new, in his GPS and move on to/or find another hot spot. This takes a lot of discipline because it can take a lot of time, work, and luck to find these spots. This way, the spot may be good for a month or much more. If he hammered the fish, it could be over in a day or so. The fish would just move to avoid all the outside activity. Due to the popularity of grouper, if he went public or shared the GPS location, he could expect to find the spot covered with dive boats and/or inexperienced grouper fishermen the next day. That could be the end of that hot spot. Some Grouper diggers will stop fishing or move out of the area if they see another boat coming towards them. Don't stop and ask:-).

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Thank you!

Thank you!