On Florida’s Gulf Coast, consistent, back-to-back summers of excellent grouper fishing have many longtime anglers recalling the robust catches of bygone days.
Gulf of Mexico red grouper were heavily exploited by commercial fleets from the 1950s through the 1970s. The passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 1976 granted the stocks a momentary reprieve, by restricting foreign vessels to beyond 200 miles of U.S. shores. Even then, maintaining acceptable stock levels wouldn’t be easy. In subsequent years, red grouper stocks suffered from fish traps and longlines, apparent flaws in stock assessment data, misappropriation of quotas, and numerous red tide events.
Today, anglers are seeing what may be a glimpse of a brighter future. Employing a mix of old-school and new-school tactics, we’re finding more and more red grouper on the shallow, near-coastal, intermediate and distant offshore waters. Four veteran grouper-diggers revealed their insights.
Famed more for the color silver than red, the nearshore waters of Southwest Florida now feature a thriving red grouper fishery.
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