Break out the mango salsa, sharpen your fillet knives, and get ready to fill your belly. It's snapper time and you better be ready to bring lots of bait. Heavy chumming and bottom fishing are the keys to your success in bringing home the snapper.

1) Chumming

Chumming is anchoring up tide of a structure and chumming the fish to you. Cutting small pieces of Spanish Sardines and white bait and letting them drift back to the structure will get the snapper on the rise. The higher they are in the water column, the more spooked the fish become. Typical leader is 20lb fluorocarbon and sometimes even 15lb. Hook size #4 to a 2/0 in a light wire model so the sink rate is the same as your chum.

2) Bottom Fishing

Often anglers will catch snapper while grouper fishing on the bottom. If you catch one or two it’s time to grab a 6k size spinning outfit and fire smaller bait down. For each fish you catch, reel up five cranks off the bottom. The larger snapper are not scared to move off the structure and stay suspended. (Three fish would equal 15 cranks and 4 fish would equal 20 cranks until the bite stops. Where it stops is where the largest fish will be.) While your buds are catching 1 to 3 pounders on the bottom, you will be catching 4 to 7 pounders suspended. Remember, don’t tell them what you are doing. The bites may stop ten cranks from the bottom, but there will be the biggest fish there.

3)Rod and Reels

We suggest our Dogfish Stik Coastal Series 7FT MH paired with a Shimano Saragosa 6000. For bottom fishing, we suggest our Dogfish Stik Bluewater  Series Medium Heavy conventional 7' to 7'6" paired with a Shimano Torium 20pg. We can most definitely recommend different rod and reel combos that will better fit your price range, so feel free to give us a call and speak to one of our expert staff members today.