The plan
This trip left the dock in Crystal River, on Florida's Gulf Coast, at 3:30 a.m. Aboard were Chad Busiere and his friends Ricky and Derek, with a plan to target gag grouper and a test to run: fish the new WYLD jig all day.
That last part was a real change for Chad. He usually brings around 80 pounds of jigs, even for a day trip; this time the idea was to commit to one or two and see what the WYLD could do. After a three-and-a-half-hour run, the boat pulled up on the first spot in deeper water.
Gags from the first drop
All three started with the 220 g WYLD. Chad was bit within the first minute and put the first gag of the day in the box. Not long after, Derek hooked a big one and fought it all the way up: a 30 lb gag, his personal best, on the jig. Ricky followed with another quality gag, and by 10 a.m. the crew was done keeping gags.
If you want the how-to behind a morning like that, from where gags hold to how to keep them out of the rocks, it's all in our gag grouper guide.
Scamp, jacks and a jig that fished itself
With the gags done and plenty of day left, the crew started hopping spots. Scamp came up, and so did amberjack, more than once two at a time.
Around 1 p.m. they moved into shallower water, and the fishing went wild. Everyone hooked up at once, and it kept going: jacks, grouper, snapper, kingfish. Chad had switched to the 120 g WYLD and was getting hit on the drop almost every time. At one point he was just talking to the captains with the jig hanging in the water, and a 40 lb amberjack crushed it with nothing but the boat's movement giving it action.
Ricky added two kingfish, both over 20 lb. From about 1:30 to 3:30 it didn't stop. Chad's verdict at the end of the day:
Any jig can have its day. This one fished better than I could have expected.
Why the WYLD worked
The WYLD is named for its wildly erratic free fall, and its three-faced shape gives it a tight wobble when you pitch it. It's built for calm water with little or no current, where a jig has to bring its own action. That amberjack, eating a jig that was only moving with the boat, is a pretty good demonstration.
This trip used two weights: the WYLD 220g in deeper water in the morning and the WYLD 120g in the shallows in the afternoon. As a starting point, we go with about one gram per foot of depth and adjust for current. The WYLD comes in 120, 220 and 320 g, and you'll find the full range in our WYLD collection.
What we've learned about grouper off Crystal River
Grouper off Crystal River hold on hard bottom, rock and rubble piles, and some of the best spots are a long way out: this trip's first stop was three and a half hours from the dock.
Cold water changes the picture. On another trip, right after a hard freeze, our crew found gags stacked in just 30 to 50 feet off Crystal River. The captain chummed with live pinfish, and in the first hour the boat caught around 60 gags, most of them on swimbaits and jigs; a 50 g DEEP went five for five.
Live pinfish are the classic grouper bait here too, fished on the bottom, and chumming with them can bring the gags up and get them feeding. Keep a few in the livewell even on a jigging day.
Before you go
Seasons, size and bag limits for grouper, snapper and amberjack in the Gulf change often. Check the current rules with FWC and NOAA Fisheries before every trip.
