I often hear people complain about how they just can’t seem to get good at catching a certain species of fish.
Most anglers this challenge to be about shaking old habits. Different species have different tricks and technique, which in most cases, any angler can learn.
I was never much good at catching Redfish under mangroves in SW Florida till I fished with an old salty dog, Capt. Dick May.
While most use expensive jigs and rigs, he put dead shrimp out on the deck in the sun to “favor” them, put one on a popping cork rig and flipped it under the bushes. If he didn’t have a fish in 3-4 minutes, he’d move to a different place.
Someone I took for an impatient fisherman was a guy who caught more reds under bushes than anyone I knew, and it was done with technique anyone could copy.
It’s misleading to hear speakers at fishing seminars say you HAVE to use a certain bait, or a certain line, or a certain rod length, or even when you HAVE to fish a specific tide.
The only thing you HAVE to do while fishing, is that you HAVE to be within casting distance of water. The rest is preference and experimenting.
I know many people who use different fishing techniques who all put fish in the box. So keep in mind, this article is about what works for me and what I’ve learned about Yellowtail Snapper fishing. Learn from different people and try different things, and see what works for you.
Yellowtail Snapper are one of the most exciting fish to catch, plus one of the best eating fish caught in Florida’s waters. The Florida Keys have a healthy population of this species, but I’ve caught much larger fish on wrecks in the Gulf.
Gulf fishing I wouldn’t keep a Yellowtail under 4-5 pounds, while in the Keys you’d be fairly lucky to catch a 5-pound fish.
If you heard someone caught a 40-pounder, it was probably in California. The Florida Yellowtail is a Snapper and rarely grows over 10-pounds, where the California Yellowtail is in the Carangidae (jack) family, and grows over 100-pounds.
Yellowtail Snapper are schooling fish, and while many are caught in the daytime, they are mostly nocturnal predators feeding on shrimp, crabs, squid, and smaller fish. The life-span ranges between 6 to 14 years.
Yellowtail Snapper are semi-pelagic. They don’t live near the surface or the bottom. They live in the middle, which is where you fish for them. This involves an easy fishing technique called “free-lining.”
As a kid in Key Largo in the late 70’s my dad rented our dock to a guy from Homestead who came down every almost weekend to Yellowtail fish. I stayed home Friday afternoons to see if Dave had 1 or 2 people in the truck.
If he only had one person with him, I was invited to go. I was only about 12 years old so this was pretty exciting, and once I fished with Dave, I was hooked on fishing for Yellowtail!
Dave was my “Yellowtail Mentor.” He taught me the technique of how to free-line for these fish so I could help fill the cooler, then he sold all of them to a fish market. He could keep the money, I was in it for the ride.
In most cases, whether on a reef or a wreck, there’s more Yellowtail Snapper than any other species. Yet they’re not caught often because people usually send a weighted line right past them and fish the bottom, while these guys feed in the mid-water table.
If it’s 80-feet deep, you’ll find yellowtail between around 40/50-feet down.
Catching them consistently is done with a technique referred to a “free-lining” which simply means you allow your barely weighted bait (or no weight at all) to naturally flow back into the current.
An important part of free-lining is knowing where what I call the “strike zone” is, and how to position your bait into it. And lots of CHUM! An unwritten rule with Yellowtail is, “Deeper water/bigger fish.”
You can catch smaller Yellowtail in 30-feet of water in the Keys all day long, but in the Gulf I’ve never caught one in less than 80-feet.
Let’s discuss positioning your boat at a wreck, where you’d find the most and the biggest Yellowtail, especially in the Gulf, though the same principles apply to fishing almost any reef or structure.
DO NOT anchor or position your boat directly on top of a wreck or any structure. This will cost you a lot of tackle and sometimes your anchor.
Yellowtail fishing involves little or no weight, so if you’re anchored over a wreck, your bait ends up drifting back past the structure, and back past where the fish are.
You want to position yourself up-current and away so your bait naturally floats back to where the fish are schooling.
When you think you’re far enough away, go a bit further. You can always let out more anchor line if you want to drift back a bit.
Consider maneuvering over your fishing area a few times from different directions to see the layout of the bottom and see where you’re marking the most fish.
Then you want to figure which way your boat is going to lay at anchor based on the wind and water currents. You may want to do a test-anchor drop away from structure to see how you’re going to lay. Your “lay” may change as currents and winds change.
To position yourself for great Yellowtail fishing, you want to be able to chum down the side of a wreck. This enables your chum-line to “draw” the fish to your “strike zone” and it will help prevent fish from swimming into structure.
Be near, but at the same time don’t worry about being too far away from your structure. Fish will come to the chum.
Chumming:
Physics 101; I see people hang a chum bag off the back of a boat, which sends the chum back 30-50 yards in the current by the time it creates a “zone,” and the fish are back 30-50 yards where the chum is, while the angler is fishing straight under the boat.
Chum? Yes, that stinky box you get at the bait shop. Get several blocks and a mesh bag to put it in. Tie it to the bow with a rope and a brick so you can lower or raise it to adjust for currents. Use a light rope that will break-away in case a shark grabs it.
Sand chum:
This is a process of mixing thawed chum in a bucket with sand to make “chum-balls.”
Use construction grade sand, a bag at a store like Home Depot is pretty cheap. Dirt from your yard does not hold a tight ball when wet.
When I make a bucket of sand-chum I also mix in a box of plain oats and some menhaden oil. Easy on the oil, a little goes a long way. I’ve also added crushed plain wheat cereal.
Don’t over-water buckets of sand-chum, too much water and you can’t make a tight ball. You can always add more water if needed, but you can’t take it out.
“Sand-Ballin” is a technique where you make a chum-ball the size of a tennis ball, insert your bait in the middle, wrap your line around it with no weight, and drop it over. I don’t do this because of the mess it makes, but the technique catches fish.
Chum blocks will last about an hour and you can also toss sand-chum out in a cup or scoop. The sand sticks to the chum and weighs it down so it sinks faster allowing you to cover more area enhancing the size of your strike zone.
It doesn’t take long for Yellowtail to get into your chum slick, so now you’re ready to get a line wet.
Braided line floats and has no stretch, 2 things that will prevent good Yellowtail fishing. I use mono.
I couldn’t catch a Yellowtail in the Keys on anything heavier than 12# line, but the fish in other parts of the state don’t seem to be affected by 25-30#, which is handy because the Barracuda & Sharks want your fish as much as you do.
I don’t use braided line offshore at all. I think the zero-stretch feature works against you. Plus I think it puts off a sound underwater in the current like sailboat rigging in the wind.
I prefer pink Ande monofilament line when using mono, for both mainline and leader material. It is harder than other mono lines which offers the angler less stretch and it’s more bite proof.
I even use pink Ande while Sheepshead fishing inshore around pilings.
What we’re going to do now is called “Free-Lining”. We’re going to use a 1/0 or 2/0 lightweight hook, 25-30# mono leader, a mini swivel, and only a split-shot for a weight.
You can add split-shots if needed depending on the strength of currents, if you need any weight at all.
If you skip the swivel and tie direct you’ll have a twisted mess of line.
Unless it’s a full boat, I use 2 rods. If I send one back with no bite and have to reel it back in, I first toss rod #2 out and leave the bail open. By the time I reel in rod #1 and get it ready for the next drop, #2 is entering the strike zone.
All night long I rotate those 2 rods without having 2 baits in the water at the same time.
The same thing applies when you bring in a fish; as it hits the deck, toss out rod #2 and leave the bail open. As you’re getting the fish on ice and re-baiting, rod #2 is working its way back to the strike zone.
If you have any down-time, use it to cut bait and keep the boat clean.
Yellowtail will eat about any bait you throw, but my bait of choice is squid cut into strips about a half inch wide & 3-4 inches long. Cut bait tends to get lost if you miss a bite, where squid holds on. (Plus you can fish all night long with about $5 worth of squid.)
If someone is trying and not catching these fish regularly, it’s almost always associated to the “strike zone.” As line is going out, people feel the need to constantly put tension on the line, as if they’re “checking” it.
This causes your bait to lift out of the strike zone by looping your line in the current which pulls it up even higher. Don’t touch the line.
If anything, keep feeding line into the water so there’s never drag on it. When a Yellowtail has your bait, line will rip through the guides on your rod, and you’ll know he’s there!
Charter boats in the Keys drop a bait and whip about 100-feet of line into the water to prevent the customers from interfering with the natural drift of the bait in the current.
Yellowtail are aggressive when they bite, I’ve had even smaller fish make me think I was tied to a water skier. Just keep feeding line out till it starts ripping through your fingers.
When that happens, throw some slack into the line, flip the bail, and start reeling like there’s no tomorrow. As the line tightens, your rod will double over and a big “Flag” Yellowtail will likely be on the other end.
(”Flag” is a term for a large Yellowtail, over 4-5 pounds)
If you’ve been chumming an area known to hold Yellowtail and you send a bait back till you’re almost out of line with no bite, assess if your bait went above or below the strike zone.
The chum zone is the strike zone, and if the chum zone is running from 30 to 50 feet deep, and back 50-yards, but you had too much weight, your bait may have been below the fish. Sometimes zero weight is the answer.
Or opposite if you didn’t have enough weight.
Occasionally I’ll use a small buck-tail as opposed to a hook with a split-shot.
If I need to experiment as to where the strike zone is I may toss my line forward 20-30 feet or even towards the back of the boat.
This will adjust where your bait is ending up as it sinks. Have each person on the boat position their drop differently and see who hooks up first.
After letting a few lines out and hooking a few fish, you’ll figure out where the strike zone is based on how much line is out and you’ll almost be able to tell exactly when you’re about to get hammered.
Watch the current; as currents change, so does your strike zone.
Another exciting thing is that these wrecks hold a lot of other fish that come into your chum-line. As you’re free-lining a bait back you really never know what may come eat even a small bait.
Someone on board can bottom-fish if you’re dropping sand chum. Grouper and other bottom fish will be closer to the boat on the bottom.
One night of the Ft. Myers coast in about 120-feet of water I had my bait next to the boat while I wiped off my hands and got hammered with a fish that came out from under the boat.
I thought it was a shark till I heard it surface in the distance. It turned out to be a 45# Cobia.
Thawed chum is a fine substance, for a fish to find a piece of squid floating in a chum-line is a treat for any fish. I’ve caught Permit, Cubera Snappers, big Mangrove Snappers and lots of nice Grouper while Yellowtail fishing.
Icing your catch:
Most fishermen put a fish “on ice.” Not me. If a fish is properly iced as soon as it comes out of the water there’s a big difference in the texture of the meat on the table.
I mix saltwater in a cooler with ice and create a brine which instantly cools the entire body of the fish. This is much colder than putting a fish “on ice” so don’t put your hands in this for more than a couple seconds. It will cause frostbite quick.
Also, ice the fish immediately. Every minute spent taking photos or tying knots with a fish flopping around on the deck is softening the meat.
The Florida state record yellowtail snapper weighed 10 pounds 9 ounces. It was caught by Jeffrey Bowles in May 2015 about 100 miles off Naples, Florida.
I broke the Florida state record Yellowtail in Ft. Myers off the Fantastico Wreck a few years ago. It was 32 inches long and weighed over 11 pounds. His tail curled in a 96-quart cooler. Whata fish!
At the time we got inaccurate info online and cleaned it.
Apparently someone in Florida caught a Yellowtail Snapper over 11 pounds but it wasn’t properly registered with the state, so I would have held the state record had I not put it on the filet table.
Not the dumbest thing I’ve done while fishing, but I would have likely held the record forever with that fish.
Yellowtail feed all year long but I logged every trip’s details and found the best fishing is the week prior to a moon in the summer month’s warmer waters. I found the night of a full moon and the few days after to be the worst fishing times.
I use a fast-action spinning rod with 25 or 30# line. Keep up with current fishing regulations, and see if they’re included with the snapper aggregate.
Break old habits, but at the same time, be cautious you don’t develop new ones. Even if you’re consistently catching good fish, experiment more.
If you’re fishing at night, which is when the best feeding occurs, double up on your safety routine and file a float plan with a friend. Extra flashlights, food, med-kit, batteries, etc. I always bring a EPIRB and someone usually has a Sat-Phone.
If there’s a problem you can almost always reach the Coast Guard with a hand-held VHF who can relay messages if needed.
From the Florida Keys to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, I’ve caught a lot of fish in my life and Yellowtail Snapper are by far my favorite to catch.
Enjoy, and send us your photos!
Jim Griffiths
Publisher, Nautical Mile
