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Hooking Up Anglers Since 2011.
Snapper fishing in May is usually dedicated to chasing yellowtail and mutton snapper out on the reef in 60 to 80 feet of water. You can target mangrove snapper this time of the year, but the fish tend to be on the small side. We usually target mangrove snapper in the fall and winter months on the more prominent rocks in 30 to 50 feet of water.
The key to successful yellowtail and mutton snapper fishing is current. You have to have a good moving current for the fish to bite. If you anchor up and there’s no current, then go do something else, because the snapper fishing is going to be a bust.
Current is essential for getting a good flow away from your boat of the chum line, which attracts the snappers and gets them in a feeding mood. When you’re targeting yellowtail snapper you’re going to want a lot of chum, both ground chum and glass minnows. Anchor up, deploy a chum bag with ground chum, and every few minutes enhance the chum line with a handful of glass minnows to get the larger snapper moving up in the water column.
A big key to snapper fishing is patience. It takes your chum line a while to deploy and start to entice the yellowtails off of the reef, so don’t expect to start catching fish right away. What a lot of guys do is get their chum line going and then drop a live pinfish or pilchard down on the bottom for a mutton snapper or grouper, while they wait for the yellowtails to start feeding in the chum line.
You can target the muttons with 20 to 30 pound test spinning or conventional tackle and just enough weight to hold bottom in the current, usually around 4 to 6 ounces. Mutton snapper are notoriously leader shy, particularly in the crystal clear water of the Florida Keys, so you want to use a 15 to 20 foot piece of 40 pound fluorocarbon leader to get your bait away from the weight. On the end of the leader, tie a 2/0 to 5/0 circle hook and pin your live bait to it.
Mutton snapper like to peck at the bait to kill it, so don’t set the hook the first time you feel a slight tug on the line. Instead, wait until you feel the fish pulling out line, then reel down and come tight and the circle hook will do the rest.
Keep the chum going as you fish for mutton snapper and watch for yellowtails feeding down deep in the chum line. Once the fish start to show, you want to drop a bait back naturally into your chum line at the same speed as the chum is flowing. A lot of times I’ll use a 1/32-ounce Hookup jighead made especially for yellowtail snapper fishing, or I’ll just use a #4 hook with a piece of ballyhoo, bonito or other fresh fish pegged to it.
Once the yellowtail bite gets going, you want to reel in the bottom rods and put them away and try to concentrate on catching the yellowtail snapper. The average yellowtail is one to two pounds, so most anglers target them with 10 to 12 pound line—usually monofilament, not braided line because it’s harder for the fish to see.
If you do decide to chase mangrove snapper, you can catch some in the backcountry around the mangroves using live shrimp or small pinfish, or fish the shallow rocky structures with pinfish on a jighead. We’ll use 20 pound tackle with a 20 pound fluorocarbon leader on the mangroves so that you can keep them from getting to the rocks. The average mangrove snapper will be 10 to 14 inches.
This Fishing Report was submitted on 5/20/2014 9:50:53 PM by Seamus and last updated on 5/20/2014 9:50:53 PM.
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