SW FL-Bonita Beach: Lanes, Yellowtail & Grouper

Bob Donalson and Steve Volz fished with me Monday morning, 8/11, offshore. The last time Bob fished with me was last April when he was down in FL, so this was his first summer-time excursion. We headed out 20 miles from New Pass and fished with live shrimp. The red grouper were biting, but they were shorts, measuring to 1/8 inch short of legal size, so we released fifteen of those. We did well with snapper, and the guys boxed seventeen keeper lane snapper to 14 inches and three mangrove snapper to 13 inches.

Bob Donalson and Steve Volz, who fished with me Monday, fished again with me on Tuesday, 8/12. They wanted some food-fish again, but also wanted to wrestle a goliath grouper or two. I headed to the close-in spot where I had been releasing goliaths consistently a few weeks ago, but there was nobody home—so we ventured out further, and we hooked three of them on blue runners, but two of them pulled off before breaking the surface. The other on, a twenty-pounder, was released after that battle. We fished in spots ranging from 12 to 36 miles, in two-to-three foot seas most of the day. The guys used live shrimp to box four keeper yellowtail snapper to 13 inches, a half-dozen keeper lane snapper to 13 inches, a 14-inch grunt, and three 15-inch porgies. They released a dozen yellowtail shorts, along with lots of red grouper shorts to 19 ¾ inches.

Eight-year-old Jake Pearcy had never fished before, until he fished the backwaters with me and his dad, Paul Pearcy, on a catch-and-release trip Wednesday morning, 8/13. The father-son team used live shrimp to catch and release a 15-inch sheepshead, thirty small mangrove snapper, a brace of 16-inch snook, and a 5-pound stingray.

I was off the water for a few days, but I fished offshore, 20 miles west of New Pass on Tuesday, 8/19, with Bob Snyder and his young son, Zach, and Zach’s grandfather, Buck Bachura. The guys caught twenty red grouper, one of which was a nice, 25-inch keeper that Buck caught on a shrimp. The guys also caught forty lane snapper to 13 inches, and boxed a dozen of those, along with ten mangrove snapper to 13 inches, of which they kept two. They also caught a brace of 12-inch grunts.

The photo shown is of angler, Buck Bachura with a 25-inch red grouper, caught on shrimp on a recent offshore trip.


You can check out all of our shark and goliath grouper action videos at the following link.
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