Page 18 - july2019

Fishing in the Middle Grounds
is the stuff that anglers’
dreams are made of and it is
truly the place where the Grouper
and Snapper are schooling you.
Let’s start with a little history of the
Middle Grounds and why the fish-
ing is so “epic” there. The Middle
Grounds is about 348 square nauti-
cal miles of bottom structure with
depths that range from 80 to 160
feet with loads of topical diversity.
The Middle Grounds provides limit-
less steep ledges and peaks that
hold baitfish, plus strong ocean
currents and a bottom that has live
coral formations. This creates a
true angler heaven. A lot of fishing on the West Coast of Florida is all about your bot- tom numbers, in the Middle Grounds if you know how to read a bottom machine, you can easily find great spots to drop down on.
Now that the trifecta of Gag Grouper, Red Grouper and American Red Snapper are open, we decided to grab 10 of our closest friends, black-out the live well with Pinfish, load three flats of Sardines, grab our sturdi- est rods and head out to the promised land. By 6:00 a.m., we had the boat loaded and
were headed out of Clearwater Pass with Capt. Tommy LaRonge leading the charge. The weather reports looked good, typical
1 to 2 foot, 6 to 10 knot winds for the day, but of course typical Florida weather, “if
you don’t like the weather wait a minute”. We reached the grounds and started fish- ing about 9 a.m. and the first stop did not disappoint. We landed some large Gag Grouper and Mangrove Snapper right away. If you think you are going to fish the Middle Grounds you had better have your “terminal tackle” ready. I use a Penn 6/0 Senator Reel, Crowder or Ugly Stick Rod with 100 lbs. test
line, 100 lbs. test leader and 8/0 Circle Hook. On the hook you are better to start off with half-cut Sardines to stink up the water and get the fish going, then switch to “live pinfish” after the bite slows a bit. *Don’t get bro- ken-off fishing with pinfish on Gag’s you may shut down the bite.
By the second stop of the day, we had well over 20 Mangrove Snapper, 4 keeper Gag’s and 2 Red Grouper
in the box, plus we had caught and released big Triggerfish and some small ARS. We were just getting
18 ONSHORE-OFFSHORE Magazine