How a group of Gulf ‘trophy hunters’ reeled in a massive Warsaw grouper

Monsters are always lurking in the deep Gulf off the west coast of Florida. When and where they bite can surprise even the most experienced captains.

“My guys were trophy hunters,” said Captain Dion Davis, who runs a quad-engine Freeman out of Sarasota allowing him to target deepwater fish on single day trips. “They wanted to swing for the fences but were also happy to take a pile of meat fish home.”

For Davis and his anglers their December trip had an early hot bite around 240 feet of water. When a newly announced red snapper season opened for captains, Davis was happy, as it gave him another target to add to the fish box.

“Our day started leaving the dock at 4 in the morning with some of my best clients fishing with Ervin Hoskins on the boat. A couple of the guys always bring jigs so they were ready immediately. On the first stop we had 11 red snapper and 8 big scamp grouper in the box by 8 in the morning. That gave us a little time to play around after that,” explained Davis.

With a day that was supposed to be 14 hours, Davis knew he had ample time to head even deeper. He asked the anglers if they wanted to go monster hunting to try and catch a big Warsaw grouper. They happily obliged.

“We stopped at a rocky pothole in the middle of nothing in about 500 feet on the way to some yellow edge, snowy and tile grounds. I had a 4-pound bonito from the day before still on ice and sent it down on an Accurate 50-wide with 150-pound braid, 300-pound leader and a 20/0 hook. I explained big fish usually eat first, so let’s give it a soak for a bit.”

Davis worked the big bonita all around the spot, reeling it up, dropping it down, and making it look appetizing. After 15 minutes without a bite, he thought any big Warsaw at the spot wasn’t interested, so he went back to regular rigs for other species.

Using electric reels rigged with 80-pound leader and 7/0 hooks, the anglers sent down squid. The first bait down caught a big porgie. Soon after another brought up a large out of season gag grouper that was vented and released. The next bait down was eaten right away and the electric reel starting pulling the fish top side before suddenly heading back down.

“I think angler Bud Parker had a porgie coming up and it got eaten. Sharks have been so bad everywhere it wasn’t clear at first what we hooked. It didn’t make a big long run, just stayed up and down like a stingray. We only had 20 pounds of drag on the electric and didn’t want to break it, it just seemed to go back down to the bottom and sit there,” said Davis.

“The reel was getting hot so we poured ice-cold water on the body of it. We slowly started to gain a little bit. We’d gain 50 feet. He’d take 30. Just creeping in. I turned off the trolling motor and put the boat in reverse trying to get a little leverage that way,” he added. “We finally got it about 100 feet off the bottom. Then halfway up. That’s about when its buoyancy went crazy and it started coming up quicker. It was good we were drifting away to maintain tension.”

Rising quicker the line was scoping away from the boat. It finally hit the surface and Davis put his eyes on the fish. He knew it was a Warsaw grouper, but the distance away made it appear to be about 100 to 150 pounds.

“As we reeled it closer we realized it was enormous. We got the length, 78 inches and girth, 70 inches. It took three of us just to lift it into the coffin box!”

The monster was iced down and the trip was capped off with a run to the deepwater grouper grounds, where even more variety was added to the box. Back at the dock, the giant was delayed a day from hoisting.

“The scale at Marina Jack’s wasn’t working, it said somewhere just over 200 pounds. We knew it was much bigger than that. The calculations of length and girth had it between 340 and 370. I was part of a team that got a 321 in the Sarasota Slam a few years ago, and this fish was a bit longer than that. I think it was 330 pounds!”

Even crazier for Davis was the circumstances around the monster catch.

“Sometimes we think we have these fish figured out, then this happens and throws it all out the window! I never would think we’d get a fish like that with that tackle, it was meant to be.”

Captain Dion Davis can be reached through the website www.gulfcoast-offshore.com.