Captain’s Corner: Ed Walker

The Tampa Bay Times

By Ed Walker

With water temperatures offshore starting to rise slightly above frigid, mangrove snapper fishing has picked up quite a bit. Since gag grouper are closed, red grouper are closed outside 120 feet, and red snapper are closed, gray snapper, known locally as mangrove snapper, are a welcome sight to any hungry fisherman. 

Our approach lately has been standard; park over a spot and set out a weighted chum cage. Depending on the depth of the water and how high the fish are showing up on the sonar we will deploy a box of ground chum and set it just above where they are in the water column. I prefer not to put any lines in the water for a few minutes while shaking the chum box to make sure its flowing. Mangrove snapper are super smart and wary. You will catch more of them if you keep all lines out of sight while they dine freely on the chum until they get good and fired up. Once the sonar screen fills up with fish below the chum box it’s time to drop 1 or, at the most, 2 lines.

To maximize your catch be sure to fish only the top of the school for as long as possible. If the fish are 50 feet high under the boat you do not want lines going through all of them to the bottom. Pick the fish off the top of the pile then as they slow down let it go a little deeper. Once you can no longer get a bite in the column only then set it on the “floor”. Another point to mention here is do not put braided line in front of a snapper. They will avoid biting your line and the line next to you if they see it.