I fish for red grouper 5 miles offshore to 40 miles offshore at a compass heading of 150 degrees to 300 degrees from MARCO Island. On the 4-hour trips, I will fish out to 12 miles, on the 6-hour trips to 20 miles, and on the 8-hour trips to 30 miles, and on occasion to 40 miles offshore. 

Red grouper are not a particularly finicky fish; they will eat a wide variety of bait such as frozen thread herring, live or frozen shrimp, live pinfish, live thread herring, and squid. They will also eat their own. The one bait I use on all of my red grouper trips is frozen thread herring. When live bait is needed, we will catch the pinfish, or I will throw a cast net for thread herring on the way out. Red grouper fishing is mostly bottom fishing with a hook, line, and sinker. I use medium-sized Penn SpinFisher VII 5500 spinning reels spooled with 30-pound braided line, Penn Carnage medium spinning rods with a 50-pound mono leader and a 5/0 circle hook and lead weight of various sizes depending on the strength of the current. Remember, when using a circle hook, you don't jerk to set the hook; the hook will set itself by slowly lifting the rod tip or slowly turning the handle. I have a saying when using circle hooks: jerky, jerky no worky! Sometimes you will use a conventional reel; I use the Penn Fathom 40 with 50-pound mono or 60-pound braided line, lead weight, swivel, 100-pound leader, and 9/0 circle hook. On some occasions, we will use jigs that are tipped with bait from ½ oz to 1oz in weight. 

Red grouper fishing is stopping on a piece of bottom, dropping your line down, and seeing what bites; we stop and shop, I like to say. There is a variety of fish that can be caught when targeting red grouper; we can catch as many as 20 different species of fish on a single trip. This is just some of the fish you can catch besides red grouper: gag grouper, strawberry grouper,' Black grouper, lane snapper, mangrove snapper, yellowtail snapper, white grunts, puffer fish, lady fish, Spanish mackerel, king fish, barracuda, cobia, sharks; that's just the most common. 

The red grouper needs to be a minimum of 20 inches to keep, and it is a 2-fish per person daily limit; the captain and mate are excluded from the daily bag limit. Red grouper are a short, stocky fish; a legal fish measuring 20 inches would weigh up to 4 pounds, whereas a 25-inch fish would weigh 10 to 12 pounds. Bottom fishing for red grouper is non-stop action when in the fish, not uncommon to catch dozens of fish on a trip. 6-hour and 8-hour trips have been best for targeting red grouper the last couple of years and can be caught throughout the year. They tend to move closer to shore or into shallower water in the summer months. Red grouper are considered a digger fish species; as a digger, they use their fins to clean out the sand in the rock to open up holes in the rock to make themselves a place to hide from larger predators. Red grouper fishing is very popular because the action is great; they give a great fight, and anyone can catch them with just a little coaching from the crew. As the fish get larger, the fight they produce becomes much greater; a 25-inch red grouper will peel the drag off a reel like you peeling a banana. The red grouper are no different than any reef fish; they are structure-oriented, so whenever they feel threatened, they head for the structure or cover. This is where the excitement begins. Once you have the fish on the line, the fish is trying to get back to its home, and you are trying to prevent that from happening. When trying to sport fish for a larger red grouper, most often the grouper will win that battle; there is definitely some finesse involved in the fight. For the most part, it's a tug of war.