We’re down in Key Largo. The weather was awesome today with 5 knot winds and 1’ rollers so I had no problem taking our little 18’er out beyond the reefs. We are still trying to figure out this reef fishing but, we chummed and chummed and finally at one spot at 120’ we attracted some fish. My oldest son landed a nice 21’ yellowtail but, what we caught more than anything was these Rainbow Runners. Question, has anyone ever eaten these. Internet says edible but wondered of any CFer’s had ever eaten one, They’re nice size 20+".
2nd question, how do you catch Trigger fish? There were 8 - 10 huge Trigger fish all around the boat but we could not get any to bite. I know how good they are so I’d love to land a couple.
Thanks
“Apathy is the Glove in Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”.
The rainbow runners are good eating. I’ve been catching quite a few lately while flatlining for yellowtail snapper.
The only way I’ve been able to catch the triggers is to use 12 lb flouro, small sharp hooks and small baits. I’ve caught them on ballyhoo strips, squid and shrimp but have not found them to prefer one bait over the other. I usually catch them on accident while flatlining in a chum slick before the baits reach the yellowtail snapper.
They do have small mouths, but around here they’ll eat anything including roscoe jigs. The best way, however, is to jump in with a pole spear and go to town!
Never fished for triggers in the Keys, but they eat squid in Charleston just fine. Also, if you want to catch yellowtail snapper, I would think you are a bit deep. I would think 20-70’ is the range you want to be in.
Also, most of what I saw in south florida and the keys were Ocean Triggers. In Charleston, we have mostly Grey Triggers… Not sure if the diet is different, but Ocean triggers tend to hang around weed lines, etc., so I would think that they are partial to eating small critters as well (i.e. shrimp, etc.).
Rob Harding
236 Sailfish 250 4s Yam
Charleston diving http://www.charlestondiving.com (Fish not Biting? Try a fast presentation of spring steel)</font id=“green”>
What size line are using? Lighten up and move into shallower water like skinneej suggested.Keep chumming and p/u some glass minnow’s to throw out in the chum-line.
Using 20lb. flouro leader on 20lb braid. In the Spring, we fished 15 - 20’ and caught tons of YT but, they were all under 12". I guess we need to be somewhere in between. Went out today looking at 2’ waves and by the time we got almost to the reef we were hitting 4 -5’ers. My little 18’ isn’t made for that so we went back in shallow and caught nothing but a bunch of big chubs. Took a huge wave over the bow, a little too much excitement. Going to try again tomorrow.
Thanks for all the input.
“Apathy is the Glove in Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”.
Yellowtails
Anchor on hump
Deploy chum bag, every few minutes toss out 3-5 of the little glass looking minnows with silver stripe down them
Within 15-25 mins. Chubs will move in. Yellowtails will stay around 15 yards behind boat.
Put 2 minnows on small jig head and cast at least 15 yards behind boat.
Its hard to wait 30 minutes but longer you wait before you start fishing, the better.
We wore out the yellowtails last week using technique above, caught some nice cuberas as well. Also use 15 fluoro.
Hump we were on was 33ft on top. Dropped off to 80+ on sides
Thanks for that info. It seems our biggest problem is finding the right combination of structure and depth. We have had chubs, triggers, rainbow runners and smaller YT’s but, other than the one 20+" one, none of the bigger ones we’re looking for. We have tons of glass minnows in the canal in front of our house and we’ve caught about a 100 so we got that problem solved. Now if the wind will die down and we can find the right spot, we should be good.
Thanks again.
“Apathy is the Glove in Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”.
I think the best strategy is to just move around until you find something good. The keys are hit pretty hard. You might be on the “right” structure, but those fish might have been picked off. We did some yellowtailing in the Bahamas and we had fish up behind the boat within 5-10 minutes. It doesn’t take them long to find the chum if they are there. I think that the idea is to get off the beaten path a bit.
What Skinneej said and get a bag of Oat’s at tackle store. Throw out a hand full every couple of minutes. It works better on the deeper side because of all the small baitfish!