We have 4 whole days where American Red Snapper (ARS) is open in the Atlantic, and 2 of those are on Friday’s where normal folks have to work. I love red snapper, but not enough to take vacation! So Saturday was the day, and I brought my favorite fishing rockstar Paul to stack the deck in our favor!
The basic plan … best bite first light … south and west to Mary’s bump for yellowtail and fat mangroves. Next, put out wahoo baits and high speed troll/search for ARS off the reef 300 – 200 feet between Maryland shoal and Looe key. Seem to catch them when you can’t keep them, figured what the heck …
The plan started out well, found great fish show on the sonar at 65 feet on the Maryland shoal rock (outside), anchored off and immediately started catching nice mangroves and decent yellowtail. We have too much fish in the freezer so I was very picky about what went in the cooler. One chum block down and we had 4 mangroves all 19” or better and 1 flag in the cooler.
Heartbreak hotel (aka the one that got away) – I put a just legal yellowtail on a big jig and it lasted about 3 minutes. Turned around and the rod was bent absolutely in half. Solid hook up on a monster grouper (I can say that because we never saw it). I got it off the bottom and had it coming up! Bang, straightened the hook fish gone. Judging by the scrapes on that bait, The grouper had that whole thing in its belly … never lost one hooked that deep! that’s is why it is fishing not catching!
Off to the deeper water, we searched for around 4 hours dropping on fish shows On the depth finder. Got a couple vermillion, another probable big grouper miss, and a mangrove snapper in 280 feet .., 280 feet! Never seen that before! No ARS to show for our efforts.
Paul is awesome! He went to the tower and drove the boat during our ARS hunt. Check the pattern on the screen shot below, absolute awesome structured search!
Robin and I were down below and I zoomed my sonar in on the bottom. So we were all able to search for bottom structure and fish together on the two stations (plug for garmin!). Here is a shot of the display looking in from the cockpit. I am loving my new setup!
Another attaboy for Paul. We were bottom fishing in 250+ feet of water with 2 foot seas and 10 knots of wind. Paul put us dead on the spots and held us in place keeping the line straight up and down below the boat. Trust me, that takes experience, and that is something I need to learn!
Forgive my transgressions…
Many moons ago I worked for the navy exchange (the navy’s retail service. We were doing a worldwide point of sale system rollout, and I went with the team for installing the systems throughout Italy. Steve Keener (remember that trip Steve?) and I drew the lucky straw and got to go to La Maddalena which is a small island just north of Sardinia.
One night on the waterfront we had a typical fantastic Italian meal with lots of dishes and wine. When it came to the secondi, the waiter asked if we would be interested in a white fish prepared in a light white wine sauce … “si si si!”, and it was a dish I remember to this day.
That was around 1993 or 1994? since then my wife and I have been trying different recipes to try and reproduce. Like the quest if the holy grail, not yet.
Brings me to this post. One night this week we made a whole mangrove snapper via an old Italian recipe Cernia Alle olive. Snapper dredged in flour browned in olive oil and then baked with lemons, capers, tomatoes, olives, basil etc. not the La Maddalina taste, but dag gone awesome!
Until next time!
Gorham Fishing Team 