Jon Chapman's Outdoors: Giant grouper makes excursion a big success
With a few days of good weather around the New Year's holiday sandwiched between a big southwestern swell and a strong cold front, the nearshore Gulf of Mexico waters resembled summertime, with plenty of anglers looking for a meal to take home. Most anglers I checked in with had a mixed bag, including a few hogfish, mangrove snapper, porgies, scamp grouper and other tasty treats.
My short nearshore trip fared similarly. We landed five hogfish between the dozens of snapper, grouper and other species as we fished between 45 and 55 feet of water over rockpiles and ledges.
For Kevin Johnson, his day was made memorable by a very rare catch. While fishing with Geoff Szymanski and Brandon Moe on a ledge in 45 feet of water, Johnson was enjoying constant action before something bigger bit his line.
"We were catching a lot of mangrove snapper so I switched to a lighter setup, a 3000 Stradic on a medium action St. Croix with a 3/4-ounce jig head tipped with shrimp. We almost had our limit of mangos when I got hit by something I knew was a good fish," Johnson said.
"It was a completely different feeling and kept running for the ledge. I palmed the spool and it was a tug of war for about 30 seconds before I slowly started working the fish up. It never made it into the ledge."
As the fish came upward, the group of three anglers had a good feeling it was going to be a grouper. Bigger gag and red grouper are common, and usually wreak havoc on light tackle.
Johnson thought it would be a gag grouper, but changed his mind when he saw it in the water. "When we looked down, it was much darker than typical grouper we catch. When Geoff netted it, he knew what it was."
In the net was a true black, or carbo, grouper, something few have caught in shallow depths off our coast.
"I've never caught one before," Johnson said. "I know it's rare so that was pretty cool."
On the boga grip the carbo weighed 18 pounds, making it even more impressive on such light tackle.
They grow much larger, but are typically caught in depths of 150 feet or more off west central Florida for anglers running to the Southwest.
After the big grouper the anglers kept fishing, landing more mangrove snapper, a few hogfish and then got into an insane kingfish bite, also something rare for the time of year.
"The kingfish bite was unreal," Johnson said, despite the anglers being out of live bait. "We were dropping jig heads with just chunks of meat and they were eating them right underneath the boat. I've never seen that before either, so it was a trip of many firsts for me."
This story was originally published January 3, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Jon Chapman's Outdoors: Giant grouper makes excursion a big success ."