After a four-month closure, grouper season opens Thursday, and many South Florida anglers will head out with an array of baits in the hopes of catching the tasty fish.
They better have some pinfish.
The season for shallow-water groupers, including gag, red and black groupers, has been closed since Jan.1 along the Atlantic coast and in the Keys.
The goal of the closure is to allow the size and number of those groupers to increase. Most captains will tell you that the closure is achieving that goal.
They’re hoping that a few of the keeper groupers that they’ve caught and released since January will bite again next week. That’s why they’ll be dropping live pinfish around reefs and wrecks. To those in the know, a pinfish is the best grouper bait.
Capt. Stan Hunt of the Rebound charter boat in Pompano Beach likes to use live pinfish for groupers. So does Capt. George Clark Jr.
“It’s funny,” said Clark, of Key Largo. “I never knew that a pinfish was a good grouper bait until we had a tough day catching bait and we kept some and threw them in the well and went out there and fished that little bit deeper side of the reef, 120, 130 feet. They wouldn’t eat anything.
“We had all sorts of bait. We had ballyhoos, we had big pilchards and goggle-eyes and we couldn’t get bites. And I said, ‘Put a pinfish down’ and it didn’t hit the bottom and we had a grouper on and that’s what they were eating, that and grunts.”
Clark, whose Rodeo Charters runs offshore and backcountry fishing trips, said he likes to bring a variety of baits when he’s fishing for groupers, and they will include pinfish.
“I always try to put a pinfish trap out there and have some available,” said Clark, referring to a metal cage that is baited to attract the little fish and placed on a sandy spot by a grass flat that pinfish frequent.
“Groupers like them. They look like silver dollars flashing down there and I think they know what they’re eating because they don’t wait long before they jump all over them.”
Capt. Bouncer Smith and his mate, Capt. Billy Springer, also love to use pinfish for groupers. They are members of a very small minority in Miami Beach.
“We watch hundreds and hundreds of pinfish get thrown back every day when we’re catching bait by guys who don’t care what [gamefish] they catch,” said Smith, who fishes out of Miami Beach Marina on Bouncer’s Dusky 33.
Like Clark before his revelation, those anglers are only interested in heading offshore with pilchards, herring, sardines and other baits that go down easy.
They figure no fish would want to eat the aptly named pinfish, which have sharp spines in their dorsal fins.
“They’ll tear your hands up if you’re not careful,” said Springer, who uses a de-hooking tool to drop pinfish that are caught on sabiki rigs into the baitwell, then handles them delicately when he puts them on a hook.
Those spines don’t bother most gamefish.
“If you asked 10 guys about using a pinfish, they’ll probably say, ‘I guess you could use it, but you’ve got to cut the fins off.’ Anyone who knows snook or cobia or grouper knows pinfish are candy to those fish,” Smith said.
Smith and Springer use a chum bag to attract pinfish to the boat. If the pinfish won’t hit their sabiki rigs, they’ll put a tiny chunk of bonito or mackerel on the sabiki hooks to entice the baitfish to bite.
“If you can see them down there and they’re not biting, they just don’t like the smell of your sabiki,” Springer said. “Give them some nice smell on it and they’ll give it a peck and try it out.”
Smith and Springer deploy a pinfish on a Penn International spooled with 80-pound braided line tied to a three-way swivel with an 80-pound monofilament leader and a sinker heavy enough to stay on the bottom. When a grouper grabs that pinfish, there’s no doubt about it.
or 954-356-3648
