Grouper fishing generally means using heavy tackle, dropping fresh slabs of meat to the bottom, and slugging it out with the fish. It's tough work, but someone has to do it! The prize is two thick slabs of white meat, currently valued at about $12 a pound if you can find it fresh. Catch a 50-pound grouper in deep water, and your trip is made.

Grouper trips are generally different from snapper trips not only for the deeper water, but in that the best fishing hours are often between dark and 11 p.m. Many of these species seem as nocturnal as a piney woods rooter (wild hog). And just as mean when they feel the hook stick home. However, hundreds of feet below, that fight is often muted. The effects of decompression tends to incapacitate these fish near the surface. Thirty years ago on the party boat, I watched an angler pull the hook loose from his big warsaw grouper. We watched the 150-pound fish float away, belly-up.

We could still see it a half hour later, hundreds of yards away, with a seagull swimming around it. Apparently it was too much trouble to move the boat and go gaff the fish.

Having taken a number of species from the middle and deeper class of grouper, I would insist on fishing with at least 50-pound tackle. A non-stretch line allows detecting the faintest nibble, even in 900 feet of water. Even old-fashioned dacron line works here, and these fish aren't line-shy, especially at night. Large circle hooks are a must here, as the grouper must hook itself in such deep water. My favorite bait is a thick slab from a blue runner. We've used fresh fillet slabs from blackfin tuna, but the runner was best. The tough meat with skin stays on the hook -- you don't want some triggerfish stealing some mushy frozen bait off the hook, not after coming this far and fishing this deep. Leave that cut bait down for 20 minutes, and something will grab it. In my experience we avoided catching restricted warsaw grouper by using cut bait. Warsaw have always favored live bait.

The deepwater grouper are generally caught by drifting on a slow-current day, or by tying up to a deepwater offshore platform. This requires a good-sized weight to reach bottom, even with a slow current, and the old-fashioned iron window weights from old homes works like a charm. If you can't reach bottom, you won't find grouper.

As for the middle grouper class, anchoring over the 30-fathom rocks is best. They're identified on many offshore charts and, upon reaching them, have to be buoyed and then anchored over, not an easy chore when the wind and current are playing tricks. This can mean fast and furious action however, when darkness falls. We've caught baskets of nice scamp, yellowfin, marbled and red hind groupers, mixed in with some huge amberjack and red snapper. At these depths, the snapper can be released, with some chance of survival if they're de-gassed in a timely fashion, punctured in the right place with the right tool. Cut bait worked fine, and action usually tapered off before midnight.

The inshore, shallow-water grouper situation is more complicated, with some of these fish hitting plugs and other artificial baits on the flats! Many of these are juveniles growing up before moving into deeper water. Two species, the gag and red, remain within sight of land to at least 15 pounds, however.