That’s what I used to get in San Diego’s fish market as they didn’t really have much fresh seafood. Definitely a fish that freezes well.
Bigger ones are around from about now until maybe April. I caught a few 14-16 inchers a couple of years ago out of Tarpon Springs. One of the mates on the boat was from North Carolina and he commercial fished for them. He was surprised to see them where we were. I had gone to a small hook, light leader and a 3-4 inch strip of squid to just catch a bunch of small snapper, etc. If I caught a grunt I would butterfly it while it was still alive and send it down on a heavier outfit and fish for grouper.
I think there are plenty of sea bass around but people don't target them. It's a winter fishery for the bigger ones and the ones I caught were in 90-100 feet of water so it can be a long run to find them in the Gulf of Mexico.
In pcola, we only catch them in shallow water while targeting vermillion. We start fishing around 200 for scamp and the vermillion( mingos) are at that depth also. We just never drop a line in less than 200 feet so we don’t see em often. It’s only 26 miles to the edge( continental shelf) here. We fish the areas close to the edge on either side. Deepdrop electrics in 300+ or reel in 200-350.
I catch a few targeting Fluke in Hyannis hey call them knot heads or Sea Biscuits the bigger ones have a beautiful shade of blue and make great fish sticks. Catch some big sea bass off Montauk as well.
One of my favorites. There aren’t that many around anymore. We use to gig cooler fulls up until about 15-20 years ago and they thinned out. Getting a limit now is almost unheard of. We got about 30 in three nights at Cape San Blas in August.
Maybe y’all can answer this question Ive struggled with for a while. One of my favorite fish for sushi or sashimi is Hamachi, also called yellowtail. When I look that up it says it’s amberjack, but I say no way. It’s lighter fish than amberjack - I’ll gobble that stuff down but not a big fan of amberjack as I know it in Florida. Can anybody tell me what it really is?
Yellowtail is what it is. They do look a bit like an amberjack so they may be in that family but are nothing similar meat wise. We caught them off of SanDiego as the main fish we were targeting. I think the ones we got in SanDiego are a different subspecies than the sushi ones though.
well they finally got smart and lowered the limit to 5 and raised the minimum size to 14" closed season from Oct 15th-Dec 1. They where getting hammered I believe they limit commercial during that time to 50lbs total catch but I could be wrong on that I'm not commercial. Enjoy your fishing this year because next year the regulations will shut down allot of the fishery, new restrictions on GAG, Red grouper Lane snapper, I use an app called FishRules and it lets you know the restriction by your GPS
We get a few ever year grouper fishing after the spring run. They are few and far between from what they were 20 years ago too. There were days of seeing 50+ fish in the 90’s. Now we can go all day and not see a single one. ( sight fishing near the beach in the spring)
