East Coast red snapper are red hot, and now is a great time to go after them.
By Mike Holliday

Watching the bottom recorder for the characteristic Christmas trees that indicate fish, Wynn Mickley backed the Just Rite over the reef. The snapper gather on top of the reef in columns that form a peak, he'd explained, creating the solid inverted vees we were looking for.

This 12-pounder fell for a goggle-eye.

Sure as his prediction, a large upside-down vee came across the screen, that, once highlighted by the multiple colors, took on the appearance of a yuletime decoration.

"Grouper will also look like a Christmas tree during the winter, but you can tell them apart by the depths of the water," he said. "In winter, genuine red snapper are at 100 feet, while the grouper will usually be out deeper or in the shallows. You usually mark grouper like that when they're spawning."

Ten years back, genuine red snapper were a rare catch on the Treasure Coast, as most of the fish fell prey to fish traps and overharvest. The elimination of the traps in federal waters and the advent of 2-per-day bag limits and a 20-inch minimum has led to a major resurgence of these tasty bottom dwellers on Treasure Coast reefs.

"You take the rod with the live goggle-eye, and I'll use the chicken rig," said Mickley. "You should know right away if they're hungry."

I pinned a small goggle-eye through the nose on the 6/0 livebait hook and watched the line peel off the spool as 18 ounces of lead towed the baitfish down about 180 feet. The lead hit bottom and I cranked the reel twice to keep from snagging the reef. Ten seconds later, I found myself pinned to the transom in a struggle to maintain a hold on the doubled-over rod.

"Amberjack, or maybe a big grouper," said Mickley, as I moaned my displeasure at the thought of what my back would feel like later that afternoon.

The fish found the reef, and the line went slack.

"You need to keep the rod under your arm, so you can get more leverage, and reel as hard as you can when you feel the hit. Don't strike the fish, because there's a large bow in the line and the fish will feel the tug and spit out the bait. Reel hard, the fish will set the hook itself, and then use your shoulders for leverage instead of your back."

Right then, Mickley got a strike, and proceeded to wind line as fast as his hand could turn. The line came tight, and Mickley kept on winding.

"If you can get the fish 15 or 20 feet off the reef, you got a good chance of getting them in," he said, as he kept the fight a standoff, some 20 or more feet over the reef. "The fish will tire out, and you can reel it up with no problem after that."

Moments later, a pair of 4-pound genuine red snapper came to the surface.

"It doesn't look like they'll make the 20-inch minimum," said Mickley, as he unhooked and vented the fish before releasing them over the side. "We know they're down there, we just have to weed out a few of the smaller fish."

The second drop produced a legal fish on the chicken rig, and a 10-pound genuine red snapper on a live goggle-eye. Two more drifts yielded another pair of short snapper and an 18-pound gag grouper.

Once the bite tapered off, and it became obvious these fish were on to us, Mickley entered the coordinates for another spot and fired up the engines.

As a rule, Mickley prefers to fish the shallow reefs in 60 to 100 feet of water, but to assure a good chance at a few reds, we headed north of Fort Pierce Inlet to an area just inside the 27-Fathom Curve. The other parameter of Mickley's fishing spots is a special no-fishing zone closed by the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council to protect rare Oculina coral formations, so it pays to know exactly where the boat is stationed at all times.

Using standup rods spooled with 60- and 80-pound-test line and 18 to 20 ounces of lead, we dropped our baits to the bottom through a heavy northerly current.

We worked five different spots, picking up a legal fish or two at every location, and by the end of the morning, we had a limit of snapper for everyone on board. At one spot, Mickley marked the fish on the recorder, but couldn't get them to bite. Insisting the fish were seeing the line, he geared down to 40-pound leader and immediately reeled in a legal fish.

Be forewarned, deepwater snapper fishing is not a sport for the weak and feeble. If the constant dropping and reeling of the weights doesn't wear you out, a mammoth amberjack or bottom-hugging grouper will surely pin you to the transom and put you in your place.

"Snapper will hit anything from a bonito strip to squid to a live sardine, but the best bait is a live goggle-eye," explained Mickley. "Live baits work bes for the larger red snapper, but a squid is a good back-up, because it's always available."

As goggle-eyes go, the smaller baits are more likely to catch the eye of a hungry snapper, while the larger baits tend to be quickly scarfed by any reef-patrolling grouper. Mickley catches his own goggle-eyes at night using quill rigs under the spotlights of his boat.

Fort Pierce is on the northern end of the goggle-eye's range, and sometimes these prized baits can be difficult to find. Spanish sardines and threadfin herring make productive substitutes that can be utilized live, or cut in half and placed on the chicken rig.

When using squid, Mickley will often lop off the head of the bait and use only the head and tentacles. When after the larger snapper, he'll rig a whole squid on each hook of the chicken rig, running the hook and leader through the top of the mantle once or twice before burying it in the body cavity. Rigged this way, a bait will display a swimming motion on the drop and as it hangs in the current over the bottom.

This angler is happy with her prize catch.

Unlike Mickley, David King on the charterboat Little Adam fishes only large live baits when pursuing red snapper. King says the live baits will lure the larger snapper to his rods, so he spends less time venting and releasing fish that might not make it past the barracudas and back onto the reef.

"I also don't use squid, because I found that 60 percent of the undersized fish brought to my boat hit squid," noted King, who admits he will occasionally pull the head off a squid and stuff a cigar minnow into the body cavity then hook the bait through the skin of the squid and the eyes of the cigar minnow for a bait that puts maximum scent into the water. "I rely on live bait to avoid catching sub-legal snapper. You don't catch as many fish, but you also throw back fewer," he said.

King uses as little hardware as possible, insisting the fish will see the bulky swivels in shallow water, and shy away. Instead, he rigs a 6- to 10-ounce barrel sinker above a swivel, attached to a 60-pound monofilament leader. King will only use pink Ande line on his rods and leaders, which has proven to outfish even fluorocarbon leaders on bottom fish.

"You can have regular clear monofilament on one rod, and pink on another, and you'll catch most of your snapper on the pink line," he said. "Try to keep the rig simple, without a lot of hardware. If you're going to use a chicken rig, use dropper loops and one snap swivel on top."

Over time, King has found a live sardine or cigar minnow to be his best red snapper baits, usually hooking the bait through the nose or eye socket on a 4/0 or 5/0 bronze livebait hook. When these baits aren't available, he'll go to a threadfin herring, pilchard or even finger mullet.

"I just use what's available, and don't go out of my way to catch one bait," he said.

The important thing is that the bait is fresh, not frozen. They'll even hit a half a blue runner if it's fresh.

"Red snapper fishing is pretty easy. When they're hungry and feeding, they're an easy fish to catch," said King, who over the last few seasons noticed that his best days are during calm weather, which allows a better presentation of the bait. "The key to catching these fish is to find them. Once you mark them, you can usually get them to eat."

Occasionally, King will mark a good school of snapper, but can't get the fish to feed. In these cases, he's noticed there's usually a southerly current, which tends to stir up the bottom and run against the natural lay of the reef.

In March, April and May, King plies the reefs in 75 feet of water with great success on red snapper, but much of the early winter he spends in 90 to 100 feet. King says you can target and catch snapper year-round in 145, 160 and 180 feet of water, but he likes the shallow reefs because he prefers to anchor and work on one school of fish at a time.

"The natural reef lines are in 90 and 145 feet of water south of Fort Pierce Inlet," said King, who emphasizes that it takes time to learn the topography of a reef over any given area. "Go to any offshore ledges and work with your recorder running a zigzag pattern, looking for a pyramid on top of the reef, but never far away from the reef. Red snapper will mark anywhere from two to 20 feet off the bottom."

Once King marks fish, he'll throw over a marker buoy and drift the area a few times. If he finds fish, he'll anchor up. If King can catch one fish, he can usually get a few limits of snapper from the same spot. During the course of a day, King will visit only four spots on an average.

Red snapper travel in schools, but never mingle with mangrove or yellowtail snapper on the reefs, according to King. The three species may be on the same reef, but the mangroves and yellowtail will hold on one side of the structure, while the red snapper hold on top.

King insists the artificial reefs are too shallow to hold red snapper, and many of the spots he's located over the years he found when traveling from one spot to another. For this reason, he keeps his bottom recorder on at all times, and checks out any solid-looking bottom.

Big grouper and amberjacks are an incidental catch when chasing red snapper, since these species inhabit the same structures and feed on similar baits. On one trip last summer, King watched jewfish swimming around the reef on his recorder. Every time he hooked a snapper, two or three jewfish would follow the snapper out of the school, and grab it on the way up. King released jewfish up to 400 pounds on that trip.

Over the last several seasons Treasure Coast anglers have noticed a growing number of red snapper on the offshore reefs, and fishing is now to the point that anglers can target these fish on most trips. The fish that were 17 or 18 inches three years ago, are now topping 30 inches. As long as there remains a 20-inch minimum and 2-fish limit, the red snapper resurgence should only improve.

Chicken Rig

Mickley's chicken rig goes on the 60-pound rod, snap swiveled into a 3-way swivel. Another snap swivel leads from the second loop of the three-way swivel to 8 to 12 feet of 40-pound monofilament leader, the length dependent on water clarity The bottom loop of the three-way swivel leads to the next three-way swivel and leader, with that bottom loop holding the 18- to 20-ounce weight.

"I like to use a leader line that's lighter than my main line," noted Mickley. "The fish may see the heavier main line, but they usually won't see the leader. If you catch the hook or weight in the reef, you can break it off, but you only have to rerig that one line, instead of the entire rig."

The snap swivels are essential to ensure the baits don't twist up the leader on the drop, and a loop at the end of the weight line allows the angler to change sinkers quickly by simply slipping the loop through the hole and around the body of the lead.

Fishing Around the Oculina Bank

Mickley's deepwater rockpiles and reefs run along a line that swerves within a mile of the popular Oculina Bank Coral Sanctuary. Bottom fishing is closed in this area, but surface trolling for ocean pelagics is allowed.

Known as The Peaks by anglers fishing out of Fort Pierce and Sebastian Inlets, the Oculina Bank is a reef system existing along a 90-mile bank of reef supporting the only known area of Oculina (ivory tree coral) in the United States. This fragile, branching coral forms massive contiguous colonies in deeper water (70 to 100 meters), where in shallow water it only forms small discrete colonies.

Oculina coral distinguishes itself by forming delicately branched bushes one to two meters tall and hundreds of feet long.

The 4- by 23-mile stretch of water ranging from 30 to 75 fathoms was designated a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) by the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council in 1984. HAPCs are areas that contain an outstanding example of a coral community, holds a rare coral species, or contribute to a unique biological or ecological condition.

In June of 1994, the SAFMC decided to close the area known as the Oculina Bank to all grouper and snapper fishing, as well as bottom longlines, dredges, traps, pots and bottom trawls. Any boat, whether trolling or drift fishing through the closed area with grouper or snapper on board, will be considered fishing for grouper or snapper in this closed area.

The Oculina Bank off Fort Pierce and Sebastian is a rectangle bordered by the west at 80-00' W and on the east at 79-56' W. North/south boundaries are 27-53' N and 27-30' N, respectively. Anglers should be aware that this zone could be expanded soon, as the federal government is proposing an additional two-mile closure, which would prohibit anchoring, while allowing recreational bottom fishing on each side of the Bank. Call the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council at (803) 571-4366 for the latest updates.