Capt. George Tunison

Get your tackle and boats in order and hope for good weather and calm seas ahead for your upcoming red snapper and gag grouper outing.

Sept. 1 marks the first of 14 weekend harvest dates marked for red snapper with the final dates falling on Nov. 28-30. (Must measure 16 inches total length, two per person with a 10-person aggregate). Gag grouper fans get their shot on the 1st as well but make it count as it’s a short window closing again on the 15th of the same month. (Must measure 24 inches total length with two per person with a four-fish aggregate). Red grouper fans will have to wait until after Christmas on Dec. 31 to bring some of these guys back to the dinner table.

Before heading off to the horizon for a great day of bottom fishing, make sure you have up to date State Reef Fish Angler paperwork in order which must be renewed annually. Check out GoOutdoorsFlorida.com and MyFWC for all other regulations, requirements and reef GPS location numbers.

My first gag grouper encounter took place decades ago on a cool November day when a 10-pound or so Pine Island Sound “redfish” inhaled my gold spoon on an undercut mangrove shoreline and took off, burning drag. This is typical cooling weather behavior as gag grouper are often known to move in shallow surprising flats anglers and usually providing the fight of the day. Moving off the flats and fishing a line of deeper water docks with bait one at a time or precision trolling along the line is also another cool water tactic that produces bites.

Most times, deep water is home to this hard fighting structure dweller that truly hates leaving home. Old salts know that grouper battles are often won or lost in the first few seconds of the fight as the fish grabs your bait or lure and instantly heads back to his home, which is usually in or around line-shredding structure.

This isn’t time for wimpy rods or lite line as these fish are not only powerful but get big like the world and Florida state record fish weighing 80.3 pounds caught in Destin in 1993. Deeply bend the rod and pour on the cranking power to try and get the fish moving in your direction or you will probably go home alone.

If sitting around in one spot dropping baits below while you bake in the Gulf sun doesn’t float your boat, then fire up the motor and start trolling. To the uninitiated, trolling means tossing a couple lures out the back of the boat and hoping for the best. In this scenario, hope would definitely be your only friend. Precision and or just successful trolling is an angling art that takes practice. Ask any northern walleye or musky angler that’s spent years with his or her eyes glued to the electronics with a hand on the tiller-steered outboard making constant direction changes to keep their lures running right along a weed edge, wall, bottom contour or break line at just the right speed and depth. Making successful runs over, around and sometimes even through saltwater bottom structure without hanging up is the same game when gag grouper trolling. There are boatloads of big plugs to pull with the Mann’s Stretch Series deep diving plugs a favorite of many grouper anglers.

Snook are still on the Gulf beaches and around any structure, on both sides of the barrier islands and in the passes. Various under- and over-slot redfish are eating lures but also enjoying much easier-to-catch dead baits along cooler shady mangrove shorelines.

Tarpon are still strung out along the coast from Sanibel to Sarasota, but central Charlotte Harbor is becoming home to more and more fish as summer progresses. Inside, along the Intracoastal Waterway in Pine Island Sound, random fish are still showing up and catchable.

Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. You can contact him at 239-282-9434 or via email at captgeorget3@aol.com.