Fishing with Capt Bouncer Smith

[Jack Hexter]

On Tuesday, 3/11/08, three friends and I made what has become an annual pilgrimage to Miami to fish with Capt Bouncer Smith the following day. Weather this year was absolutely beautiful, actually too perfect for the sailfish which we were targeting. Winds were 5-10 most of the day, but died off in during the middle of the day where we could not even keep the fishing kites in the air. Seas were 1' or less and the current was almost non existent. (the day before, Bouncer had gone 11 for 13 on sails and had 6 good sized dolphin - but he had more wind and a lot more current ) We went all morning without a bite. When the wind died, we pulled some live baits over several of the many wrecks off Key Biscayne. One of our crew brought a heavy spinning rod with some butterfly jigs to try if he got a chance, and this was his chance.

Having spent a lot of time fishing over these wrecks while I was in Miami, I wanted no part of any amberjack which are the usual suspects known to inhabit them, so when a deep rod bent over, I told friend Gary Coil to pick the rod up and crank. Well I was correct and up came a small but legal AJ, also known as a reef donkey. These fish fight extremely hard and are edible, but there are a lot better eating fish in the ocean. Another friend with us, Tom Bell had never caught an AJ and really wanted to crank one up, so the next time the rod bent over, I told Tom to pick it up and low and behold, up comes a 22# Gag Grouper. It was Tom's biggest grouper, but not the AJ that he had hoped for. Bouncer jokingly got on my case over this fish and my belief that it was going to be an AJ, so the next wreck he took us to, I picked up the rod and cranked for a while when a small AJ came up on the end of the string. During these drifts over the wrecks, Gary Anderson,(GanderVA) the fellow who had brought the butterfly jig outfit was jigging the whole time and managed to hook up with a couple mystery fish which pulled him into the wreck and cut him off. I kept reminding Bouncer about Al Pflueger's theory of wreck fishing, that being to pull up on top of the wreck, dump your jig box overboard, then go fishing because you were going to loose all your jigs in the wreck anyway. By the time I landed my AJ, Gary got tired jigging and handed his rod off to Tom who dropped it down and hooked up. 15 minutes later, we had color beneath the boat and it was large. A couple more minutes and up popped an extremely rare sight, a 57# Warsaw Grouper. In my 28 years of fishing in South Florida, I had never seen one of these fish and Capt. Bouncer had last seen one almost 4 years before. It's not a large one as far as Warsaw's go, but being caught on a spinning rod (65# braid) and an artificial lure makes it very unusual, but very commendable catch.


Tom and 22# Gag


Tom with Sherman(Bouncer's mate) and a 57# Warsaw

[gman]

Great report, the new style of butterfly jigging over wrecks and reefs is absolutely deadly for certain species. We have great success jigging for big warsaw down of the texas coast when we go every year. I heard Bouncer is one hell of a captain. Congrats on a great trip. For us its normally the opposite, we take the trip to Miami several times a year for swords and the winds are normally gusting so we end up smacking the sails. Best of luck