Black Grouper
May 25
I usually start out by releasing about 30 live sardines and chum with ½ inch chunks of ladyfish or mullet. You know you’re in a good spot when you start catching Yellowtail. Where you catch big Yellowtail you can count on big Black Grouper lurking below. Live large mullets or ladyfish are my favorite baits when I am targeting this species. Black Grouper are aggressive; they attack and fight with pure muscle making a succession of short high torque runs. I’ve caught four and five of these monsters in a day just by being patient. Sounds easy so far…what’s not easy is wrestling a 60 pound black grouper to the surface. Black Grouper, when they take bait, dart for the first obstruction they can find, often before you have a chance to set the hook. This usually results in a broken leader. So when you feel that first tug, you jerk that rod as hard as you can, and start horsing in line as fast as you can, because if you don’t get that fish off the bottom right away, he is going to run under a ledge and break your line. Get his head pointed to the surface and you might have half a chance of having grouper on your barbeque grill. If his head goes down right away then forget it, I guess you eat out. But you won’t see me at a restaurant if I’ve been fishing because I ALWAYS set my hook and I ALWAYS land my fish.
Black Grouper will tear up tackle
faster than anything. When you fish these
guys you need big hooks: #7’s, a big line,
80 pound test is not too heavy, and heavyduty
rods and reels. I’ve broken enough
ugly sticks to build a Palapa trying to
mule these monsters up from the deep.
No fish is as tasty grilled in one of
my famous tour guide barbeques than a
Black grouper. I can’t think of a single
fish that is more satisfying to land either.
Just writing this article has gotton
me excited. I predict that I and sideman
“Carne Dulce” will be filling my fish
coolers all week long with Black Grouper
at Rocky Point.
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