Hello, everyone on the Spacefish. Sorry for the delay on my usual monthly report. I just posted it (only 6 days late). I always do my write up the evening before the last day of the month so I can give the most accurate forecast possible on a monthly basis. I wrote my report the night before, like I always do, but I was fishing nonstop with tuna trips and bottom trips averaging 14 to 18 hours on the water between prepping, fishing, and cleaning. I left my report the same because I really wanted to get the importance of a backup plan in everyone’s head and the report still holds true.
May has phenomenal opportunity, but grouper will be on most anglers brains for the first couple weeks. This opening week was perfect. Besides opening day, the sea conditions were great. The current was easy and the bite was on. Starting Monday, reports of cold dirty water were coming from the South and by late Tuesday, we couldn’t out run it any longer. As of today, the bottom is completely shut down, so what options do bottom fisherman have for Friday and Saturday — or after that?
I am hoping that this is just a section of cold dirty water and it will pass quickly because this is way too early to be experiencing full blown thermocline conditions. You can fish big structure high in the water column for amberjacks and occasionally you will score a grouper that’s above the dirty water. That game plan is all about luck and isn’t very solid for scoring a grouper, but amberjacks make me feel better about my day so it’s still a good plan. Personally, I like amberjack for eating better than grouper anyways, but that’s just me.
Another solid game plan for grouper is to wait them out. This requires anchoring skills and the idea is to drop a mixture of big live baits and big stinky baits to let them soak. The baits need to be big to avoid the red snapper. The red snapper also slow during these conditions, but as we all know, snapper out number grouper probably 500 to 1 and I am not even being sarcastic.
Just wanted to give you a fresh report from what I observed on the water from late yesterdays trip. We got them good but it was a race against bad water and reports from today were very poor with only a few groupers being caught.
Let’s hope this funky water is short lived and tomorrows rough seas send it far away. If it doesn’t try fishing for other species and forget the bottom or try some of my suggestions.
Good luck!
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