With a slim weather window, Tampa Bay-area charter captain makes last gag grouper run
When the early closure announcement for gag grouper season was made, Captain Brian Rubey said his phone started ringing.
“There were a lot of people who wanted to get out for a last-minute trip,” said Rubey, who runs a 32-foot twin-engine Cape Horn boat for offshore charters.
“But I didn’t want to take them when it wasn’t safe. The weather has been so bad, I basically told them I would try to get them out next year.”
Rubey and many other charter captains have to rely on nice weather to make their business safe. They need to fish to make it profitable as well, so finding that balance has been difficult. Offshore charters are expensive and if clients aren’t able to keep the fish they want to target, they may have the desire to cancel.
“I had four trips for the first few weeks of November with people who wanted to cancel because of no gag grouper. Others I heard had even more canceled.”
With a small weather window, Rubey took a group out for one last trip on Wednesday, the final day for gag grouper keeping. It was rough, but he wanted a chance to get deep for big gag grouper.
“If it wasn’t the last day, we wouldn’t have gone. There’s basically been one day a week allowing us to get out since the season started. That’s just the way it is,” Rubey explained.
Going for big gag grouper, he headed deep, running to 240 feet of water about 90 miles offshore. The first few spots were fishy, but not what he was hoping to see.
“Big red grouper, firetrucks. These were gag grouper spots I have always fished and we caught so many big red grouper. I think we moved five or six times and kept getting red grouper. Eventually, we headed to a rock and sent down big 10-inch grunts.”
With red grouper closed, he kept trying to avoid them. Finally, after a fight with a bruising bottom fish, their target was acquired.
“The 100-pound test on a Shimano Speedmaster and Red Lion rod held up and we got a pair of big gag grouper, 42 and 39 inches. After that, we moved to another rock a half-mile away where we put in 14 big scamp grouper in about 30 minutes then called it a day.”
With gag grouper, red grouper, amberjack and red snapper now closed for Rubey and other offshore charter captains, he probably won’t be spending much time fishing between 100 and 500 feet of water.
“We can still go get meat. On real nice days, we’ll get some trips together for deepwater fish running 165 miles offshore for queen snapper, kitty mitchells, tilefish and more. Then we’ll be doing a lot of nearshore stuff for hogfish, yellowtail snapper and mangrove snapper. The mangrove snapper fishing has been really good in 90 feet and we’ve been getting 15- to 20-inch yellowtails in 75 feet of water fishing light jigheads.”
