GROUPER FISHING ON REEFS 10 TO 20 MILES OUT

Dec. 22, 2006, Jesse White, boat Sea Hunt, Rocky Point fishing, Mexico:

My partner and I were fishing out of Rocky Point off of our new 23 foot center console boat, Sea Hunt, with a 250-h.p. Yamaha 4-stroke motor.

We arrived in Rocky Point early Tuesday morning to a heck of a chill in the air!

We waited until around 10 a.m. and then headed out to make bait. Using sabiki rigs, we were only able to catch the ever present Calico bass off of the close to shore reefs. We also did manage to get a few small mackerel of some sort and what we believed to be a baby yellowtail.

We the headed out from Rocky Point to fish some of the further out reefs 10 to 20 miles from shore.

We rigged up a couple of live bait rigs and dropped down with 12 ounce weights, which was barely enough to keep us down in the drift.

We had a few baits come back pretty mauled up from hits we missed. After an hour or so. we managed to put a nice gulf grouper that we estimated at around 30 pounds in the boat. That was it for fishing on Tuesday as the temperatures dropped as the sun started to set.

For Wednesday's fishing, we headed out of Rocky Point at around the same time to make bait.

Once again, we mostly caught the small calicos with a few mackerel mixed in. I also caught one small flounder on a sabiki with a tip of cut bait on it.

We decided to head outside and give it a try again. We had a good hookup that somehow snapped our heavy mono leader line off of the Spectra line, and lost what was likely a nice fish. We managed to put another 30 to 35 pound fish in the boat at around 4 p.m., finally.

We are just starting to learn the ropes on grouper fishing and are "cutting our teeth" so to say on catching the smaller fish. We really want to hit the deeper reefs and experience the black sea bass bite off Rocky Point. After putting these grouper in the boat, it will be hard to return to largemouth bass fishing in the Phoenix area!

The seas were really fairly mild overall off Puerto Peñasco. There was a light chop with no whitecaps out of the north. I believe the water temperature on the surface varied from 59-63 degrees, if I remember right. We caught two total grouper, one each day, that we actually boated. The fishing depth was between 58 to 70 feet, if I recall.