Not long after I moved to Vero Beach, I heard an old-timer talking about the epic battles he had with big grouper right in the Indian River. He used either diving plugs to troll the river or big chunks of mullet fished on the bottom near a favorite grouper hole. When he got a hit, the fight was on.  Unless he could turn the grouper’s head in the first few seconds, the fish would dive into a hole, spread his fins and become one with the rock. 

When that happened, the fisherman would try one or two tricks. First, he would tighten up on the line and strum it like a guitar string. Supposedly that makes the grouper either really mad or just irritates him enough that he leaves his hole and the fight is on again. The other trick was to let the line go slack and just wait. At some point, maybe half an hour or 45 minutes later, the fish would decide it was no longer in danger and come out of the hole or at least turn around in the hole. If the fish is facing out he can’t wedge himself in with his fins and you have a chance of actually catching him.

The more I asked around about grouper fishing, the more specific the information I picked up. Apparently many years ago when the Army Corps of Engineers was dredging out the Intracoastal Waterway down the Indian River, they came upon a big ledge of limestone that the dredge couldn’t budge. Bring in the dynamite! The result is a rocky, pitted ledge on each side of the ICW channel and, lo and behold, it’s only a couple of miles from where I live.

My first experience trying to snag a grouper ended quickly. I positioned my boat where my depth finder showed the edge of the channel and tossed out a live pinfish with a one-ounce sinker. I laid the rod down and started doing something else and within fifteen seconds the reel drag was screaming. I grabbed the rod, set the hook and promptly got broken off. At least I knew there was something big down there.

Since then I’ve refined my technique.  Now I take one of two approaches. One way is to hook a live pinfish from under the bottom of the jaw and bring the point of the hook out of his mouth. He’ll be on the end of a three or four-foot 60-lb fluorocarbon leader trailing off a swivel and a one-ounce egg sinker. I then slowly troll that rig along the side of the ICW. I can feel the rocky bottom but the sinker tends to slide along the bottom and the pinfish swims upright, keeping the point of the hook away off the bottom. If I’m successful, the dragging bait comes to a very sudden halt and then moves the other way. It’s a matter of seconds whether he gets to a rock or I get him coming toward me. Occasionally the sinker hangs up on the bottom and I have to reverse course to pull it out and every so often I lose the rig.

The other approach is to set up a sinker, swivel and leader under a long cork with the main line running through the center of the cork. A small bead above the cork lets me set whatever depth I want the bait to be at by using a rubber band or piece of line tied on the main line as a “stopper.” Generally I want about eight feet between the cork and the sinker and another three feet of leader with the bait at the end.  Then I set up the boat to drift with the current along the edge of the waterway. This approach is best used when there’s little wind or when the wind is from the north or south and blows me along the direction of the waterway. I use my little trolling motor to keep positioned over the ledge and just keep an eye on the cork. When it goes down I rear back and we find out who’s the winner.  If it’s a big fish and it breaks me off I come to close to falling backwards out of the boat. It hasn’t happened yet, but I don’t keep my wallet in my pants pocket when I’m doing this.

A lot of the old-timers troll deep-diving plugs, but that hasn’t worked so well for me. These plugs can cost a bundle and there treble hooks, while very effective at snagging Mr. Grouper, also tend to grab the bottom. But in reality even a lost plug or two is a lot less expensive than making a trip five miles offshore to try to catch a grouper.

The fish in the river tend to be smaller than those you find offshore and that means a lot of them get tossed back when they don’t meet the limits. Also, there tend to be a lot of goliath grouper—a forbidden catch—mixed in with the gag grouper that are legal if they’re the right size. Still, snagging a big grouper, whether you land him or not, is a real change of pace from using light-tackle on trout and redfish.