Catching big snappers offshore comes down to chumming heavily to build the spot, then using larger baits fished either tight under the boat or far back behind it. For this How 2 Tuesday I share what I have learned fishing alongside experts like Steve Roger and Scott Walker on Into the Blue. The best snapper fishermen do not just find a spot, they build one with a commercial chum bag and a lot of chum. Then they get past the little fish with bigger baits, drop sandballs to chum vertically, and pay a bait way back to reach the big grays, muttons, and yellowtail.
Listen now: press play in the player above and follow along.
You build the spot with a lot of chum, then use bigger baits to get past the small fish. The best snapper fishermen use a commercial chum bag and a five-pound-plus block, sometimes a whole case of chum, to draw fish and let everything build. Then they fish larger baits like a full pilchard or a plug of ballyhoo, either right under the boat where big fish stack, or cast far behind the boat and let it drop to the bottom. Patience while the spot builds is the key.
Because a commercial chum bag made of old shrimp net disperses chum fast through the wave action, so a five-pound block goes quickly, and the scent has to reach fish that may be a long way off and a long way down. In a hundred or two hundred feet of water, the chum the fish behind the boat do not eat keeps trickling toward the bottom for a long time. The more you chum, the more big fish you pull in, so you build the spot before you even fish.
Bigger baits that the small fish cannot inhale instantly. A jig head with a full-size pilchard works for gray snappers, or a plug of ballyhoo with the head and tail cut off dropped down. If you go out with just jig heads and shrimp, the little snappers will destroy your bait before a big one gets it. Stepping up the bait size is how you select for the larger grays, muttons, and big yellowtail.
A sandball is a mix of sand and thawed chum you pack into a ball and drop, so it sinks and disintegrates on the way down, chumming vertically instead of just across the surface. You can also hide your bait, even a live pilchard, inside a sandball so it makes it down through the frenzy of fish behind the boat to the bottom. A little tug breaks it open and leaves a live bait on the bottom where the big snappers are.
When the fishing gets tough, use a small hook or tiny jig head, a bait a bit larger than what is behind the boat, and pay line out so the bait mimics the chum drifting slowly down. It may take a hundred yards to reach bottom. You will not feel much, but when the line accelerates or stops, that is a bite or the bottom. Reel fast to check. It takes practice to sense the bite on the drop-back and to judge how far to let it go.
Because you are not just landing on the best snapper spot, you are creating it. Heavy chum over an hour or two pulls in snappers, grouper, goliath grouper, barracuda, and more, and the feeding fish put off a signature that draws even more. If you are patient enough to let it all build and then pay a bait way back, there are bigger snappers available than you would imagine, whether you are on an eight-foot channel or two hundred feet of reef.
The biggest thing I learned from Steve Roger and the Into the Blue crew is that they do not find the best snapper spot, they build it. A commercial chum bag and a lot of chum pulls in snappers, grouper, barracuda, and more over an hour or two, and the feeding signature draws still more fish. I explain how that patience pays off in the episode, so press play in the player above.
If you drop jig heads and shrimp, the little snappers will eat you alive before a big one ever gets a shot. The fix is bigger baits, a full pilchard or a plug of ballyhoo, that the small fish cannot inhale. I break down the bait choices that select for the larger grays and muttons in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Two tricks change the game. Sandballs let you chum vertically and even sneak a live pilchard to the bottom through the frenzy, and the long drop-back pays a bait way behind the boat to mimic the drifting chum. Sensing that bite on the drop takes practice. I walk through both in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Pay attention to your chum, bring more than you think, use bigger baits, and be ready to fish both under the boat and way back behind it. Do that and you will start catching the bigger ones.
How 2 Tuesday is my weekly series where I break down one fishing skill at a time, from knots and casting to gear, tactics, and the habits that make you a better angler. Watch and listen to every How 2 Tuesday episode from Tom Rowland.
snapper · mutton snapper · gray snapper · yellowtail · offshore fishing · chumming · Steve Roger · Scott Walker · Into the Blue · sandball chum · ballyhoo · pilchard · How 2 Tuesday · Saltwater Experience
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's How 2 Tuesday series I break down one practical skill or lesson at a time, from fishing technique and gear to the habits that make you a better angler, in short, focused episodes you can put to use right away.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 36, Big Snappers Offshore...
Hey everybody, welcome to How2Tuesday. I just asked some people on Instagram, did a little Instagram Live, and asked if they had some questions, and you gave me some good ones. One that I really liked was: how do you catch big snappers offshore?
I would say that I was not an expert at this, and I'm probably still definitely not an expert at this, but I have been around some experts. When we're filming Into the Blue, I have the opportunity to fish with Scott Walker and Steve Roger. Steve, in particular, is very, very good at catching these big snappers, whether that's gray snappers, muttons, or even the big yellowtail. There are lots of big snappers around the Key West area, and the guides down there have it dialed in.
So there's a couple of common themes, and, you know, I'm an inshore guy that goes out offshore with those guys. I go offshore on my own too. I'll fish for big snappers against the mangroves, and I'll fish for them on structure: inshore wrecks, nearshore wrecks, reef areas, stuff like that. So a lot of this will apply to all these different areas in various forms.
There are a couple of common things that I see the best do consistently, and one is to really pay attention to the chum. If you're going offshore, you're going to need a lot of chum. Where a lot of the inshore guys I fish with might take a box or two, these guys are taking a case, a case of chum. This is particularly for yellowtailing, or where you're going to start yellowtailing, but almost always when these guys are going yellowtailing, they're also going to have a bottom rod down.
So if you're going to be yellowtailing or fishing for muttons, it's going to start off with a lot of chum, and they're going to have a commercial chum bag, which is something that was kind of invented, I guess. The first time I saw it was in Key West. It's made out of old shrimp net, and at the top it's almost like the size of a hula hoop, a piece of hose with a rope running through it. It's very big. You're not messing around with any of those little chum bags you buy at the tackle shop.
Those are great for some things, but when you're going to be chumming like this, this bag has a very large opening on a heavy-duty rope, and you tie it off just above the surface of the water. The wave activity really disperses this chum fast, and that's really the reason they're using so much chum, it's going out of that old shrimp net so quickly. So they'll start off with a five-pound, or bigger, block of chum, really like four or five of the small blocks you'd get out of the freezer, all put together into one. They throw that in, and it saves on a lot of cardboard and a lot of trash, and you've got one big block of chum in that bag.
Immediately, you're going to start seeing all kinds of stuff come up to that chum bag, including sometimes some decent snappers. These guys haven't even begun to think about fishing yet, they've gotten to their spot, put their chum out, and it's going to be a while before they fish. It's all about building for the larger fish. It's all about building. And this chum at the boat hasn't even gotten back yet to where the big fish are likely to be caught.
As this starts to build, you're going to see the yellowtail build up behind the boat. You're going to see the gray snappers coming up. You're going to see all kinds of stuff start happening. They're going to get more and more comfortable as more and more chum gets past them. We typically go out there also with a livewell full of pilchards, live-chumming those, and maybe taking any of the dead ones, chopping them in half with a pair of scissors, and trickling them back as well.
If you were even fishing inshore, nearshore, a reef, or a wreck, wherever you're trying to catch snappers, and you go out with jig heads and shrimp, which snappers love to eat, the little ones are going to get you. They're going to get you so fast that if you really want to catch the larger snappers, you're going to need to use a larger bait. That could be a jig head and a full-size pilchard for gray snappers, or it could be a plug of ballyhoo where you cut the head off and cut the tail off, you've got a big piece of ballyhoo that you're going to drop down.
Now, what I've seen is that when the fishing's really good, the big snappers will come up right underneath the boat, and you can drop a rod straight down and have a chance at catching something pretty big. But more often than not, what these guys will do is fish way behind the boat, cast as far as they can behind the boat and let it go down to the bottom. That's a very good technique in shallower water: cast way back behind the boat, let it drop, and just let it sit there.
Big fish are coming in because they smell the chum, and if you've been there for an hour or two and you're chumming heavy, you're reaching fish you can't even imagine you're reaching. If you're in, say, a hundred feet of water, two hundred feet of water, the chum going out, the fish right behind the boat aren't getting it all. It's just trickling down, forming kind of a line of chum, and it takes a long time for that stuff to hit the bottom, a long time.
We'll also use sand balls with chum to get the fish a little closer to the boat, where you mix sand and thawed-out chum together and drop these balls that disintegrate on their way down. So now you're not just chumming across the top of the water and letting it slowly sink, you're actually dropping this ball straight to the bottom, and it's disintegrating as it goes all the way down. So now you're chumming vertically, not just horizontally, and that's a really good way to do it.
You can also hide your bait in one of those sand chum balls and have it go all the way down to the bottom and then start to disintegrate over time. People will sometimes hide a live pilchard in there, because there's no way you're going to get a live pilchard through that frenzy of fish right behind the boat. So they hide a live pilchard in the sand-ball mix and drop it straight to the bottom. It can make it down there, and then you give it a little tug, and you can have a live fish on the bottom that's made it through that cloud of voracious fish.
Another technique I see happen when the fishing gets a little tougher is to go with a small hook, weightless, with something a little larger than what the fish immediately behind the boat are eating, and just start paying that line out. Now you're trying to mimic what the real chum is doing, you're chumming horizontally, but it's slowly, slowly, slowly going down. It may take, you know, a hundred yards for that bait on that little hook or tiny jig head to get to the bottom, but you're paying out and paying out and paying out, and at this point you're not really going to feel anything.
You're paying the line out, this takes a little bit of skill to get used to, but you're paying the line out, and then it just starts to accelerate a little faster than what you were doing. That's a bite. That's a fish that has it. Or it will stop and won't go out anymore, and that either means it's hit the bottom or something's got it in its mouth. You feel like you've got a bite, you reel in real fast, and either something's there or it's not. It takes a little bit to get good at sensing this bite on the drop-back, and it also takes a little bit to get comfortable with how far you should let it go back there, and really, it's way back there, depending on the tide and the current. In fact, you may not even be able to get it to the bottom unless you use a small jig head or some kind of weight.
So the big fish are going to come on bigger baits, either directly under the boat because you've chummed them there with sand balls, or way, way back behind the boat.
So, in order to catch the bigger ones: pay attention to your chum, go out there with a commercial chum bag and a lot of chum, have live pilchards or live bait, whatever's available in your area, and then be ready to fish not only directly under the boat, but way, way back behind the boat too. I think you'll definitely start to catch some bigger ones that way. It's worked really well for the guys on Into the Blue, and I've learned a thing or two each time.
But again, the common theme is letting everything build. You are building this spot, you're not just going out there and happening to land on the best snapper spot. You're bringing those snappers to you, as well as the grouper, the goliath grouper, the barracudas, and everything else. You're going out to a place that has live bottom, and you are building that spot. Once you get it built, once you start catching some fish, those fish are throwing stuff up, putting off a signature of something feeding, and other fish start to come in. If you can be patient enough to let this all build and then pay something way back there, you'll see that there are some bigger snappers available right there, whether it's a little eight-foot channel or 200 feet out on the reef.
Check it out. Alright, I hope that helps. If you do catch one of these bigger snappers, post it up on Instagram, tag me, or send me a DM, Tom_Rowland. I'd love to see it. See how this podcast helps you catch more fish. Alright, see you.
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