Captain’s Corner: Ed Walker

By Ed Walker

The Tampa Bay Times

Mangrove snapper, gray snapper by their real name, can be one of the more difficult fish to coax into biting. They are very smart and have keen eyesight which helps them see your hook or the leader near your bait. There are numerous ways to help get around this wariness. You can chum them heavily until they let their guard down or use lighter leader and tiny hooks to disguise your approach. Still another way to reduce their ability to see your rig is to fish at night. The difference in catchability between night and day is… well, night and day.

When we are offshore fishing for grouper we keep a mental note of the spots a catch a nice mangrove snapper or two in the daytime. If we stay out after dark we will go back to those same spots after sunset usually have an epic bite. In other words; if you get a few snapper to bite in the daytime you can probably go catch your limit after dark. This is true on any moon phase. There is a common line of thought that you need a full moon to really catch the mangrove snapper at night but it isn’t true. Any night will work.

Our standard approach is to anchor and chum to see if they will come to the surface for freeline fishing. If they do not then we send baits down with minimal weight or on jigheads. If there are a lot of small fish you can sometimes weed through them by using larger baits such as live pinfish that the smaller fish simply cant eat.