Go short for groupers

Once anglers get hooked on bottom fishing, they may be tempted to leave king mackerel gear ashore.

The day dawned warm and calm, perfect conditions for an offshore fishing trip in springtime.

Captains Ray Massengill and Greg Voliva of Down East Guide Service were taking a day off from their regular guide fishing schedules for a day of fun fishing.

Normally they ply the waters of Pamlico Sound for tarpon and red drum, the Roanoke River for striped bass and the shallows for red drum and speckled trout, or the shoreline near Morehead City for cobia or Spanish mackerel. Massengill even takes fishermen on trips in inches deep water for gigging flounder.

But this trip was to be the total opposite of such skinny water fishing. The professional fishermen were headed offshore for a day of catching grouper.

“A lot of fishermen don’t realize how close the grouper can be to the hill,” Massengill said. “You can catch them within 10 miles if you know the right places. Extend that distance to 20 miles and grouper can be caught anywhere there’s a good ledge.”

Both anglers have been commercial fishermen whose livelihood depended on catching enough fish to sell during a day of fishing. So they thoroughly know the haunts and habits of bottomfish offshore from Morehead City where Down East Guide Service is now based.

George Beckwith Jr. started the operation out of New Bern and Oriental in the 1980s primarily as a tarpon and adult red drum fish fishery. But he has since gained these two guides and expanded his Down East operation to cover a larger geographic area, including the offshore waters of Morehead City.

The day began with a bit of a twist. For those who catch king mackerel, the scene would have been extremely familiar.

While Voliva navigated, Massengill donned his rain gear and stood at the bow with a cast net at the ready. Pelicans diving showed the location of schools of menhaden just outside Beaufort Inlet at the edge of the surf.

Once Massengill began casting Voliva went forward to cast as well. Soon the livewell and the fish box were full of big, speckle-sided “shad.”

It’s interesting how many names anglers and commercial fishermen have for menhaden. But only in Morehead City are they called “shad.” It can be confusing to outsiders who are fishing the Roanoke for hickory shad, or to inland reservoir anglers who use threadfin and gizzard shads as bait. But to anyone heading “Down East,” shad are the same pogies they use for king mackerel bait.

After loading the boat with shad, the duo navigated offshore. The destination was an area 15 to 18 miles east where broken bottom occurs well inside the continental break.

The Northwest Places and the Big 10 Fathom ledges and Little 10 Fathom ledges are close together at this distance. Gulf Stream waters eddy that near the coastline at times.

Combined with steep drop-offs, these natural structure areas attract lots of fish, with bottomfish especially abundant.

Soon Voliva was winding the motor down. Instead of eyeing the GPS he had used to guide the boat to the area he switched up the gain and increased the scale on a color depth-finder, which most bottom fish anglers call a colorscope.

“The solid dark color is the hard bottom,” he said, pointing to deep red bottom line of the screen.

“The broken area with different colors is baitfish or bottomfish, and the single marks above the bottom, are individual fish, which are probably groupers. The light-colored edge shows fish all along the bottom, or at least when we see that on the colorscope, we know the fish are there. It could be softer signals from live bottom or something else. But when you see that on the colorscope. it means it’s a good spot to fish.”

“We catch mostly gag groupers here,” Massengill said. “But you never know what you’re going to catch for sure. All you can do is bait a hook and drop it down to see what’s there.”

The boat was rigged with connections for electric-assist reels. A couple of spare batteries provided backup connections for extra bottom-fishing rods. The reels were attached to 6/0 reels spooled with monofilament and superbraid lines.

“The superbraid gives you a better sense of feel and helps you set the hook when there’s wind or current,” Voliva said. “But in the waters where we catch grouper that are only up to 60 feet or so, either type of line will work.

“When you fish from a small boat for groupers, you should only fish the calm days anyway. Mono works fine, so a fisherman can use what he has, with no need to re-spool the reel with expensive superbraid just for bottom fishing. You can use a manual reel just as well. But the electric reels save a lot of winding time.”

Voliva found a likely spot with broken bottom and lots of fish marks. He turned the bow into the wind for a few yards. Then Massengill dropped the anchor.

“Nothing is as important once you find the fish on the machine as getting the right anchor course,” he said. “The wind and the current may be doing two different things to the boat. It can be a trial-and-error process. You drop the anchor so the boat will swing back over the spot you’ve spotted with the colorscope. If the anchor line gets tight and you don’t see the same spot, you have to re-figure your course and try again.

“Once you see how the boat is going to align, the compass heading will stay the same for subsequent drops, as long as you’re near the same place and the current flow’s the same or the wind doesn’t shift.”

Be sure to read the rest of this story, which first appeared in the April 2007 edition of North Carolina Sportsman magazine. Subscribe to ensure you don’t miss a single information-packed issue of the magazine, or you can buy individual copies in our digital archives.