Capt. Billy Miller and I ran a two boat charter in search of gag grouper this week. Our target area was Times Square, just north of the Egmont ship channel in 35 feet of water.

   About ½ mile from the rocky bottom I was looking for I put out two trolling rods, a wire line rod with a yellow feather in front of a cigar minnow and a #3 planer with a silver 3 ½ Drone spoon.

   Trolling at 3-5 knots we immediately caught 2 kingfish in the 8-10 pound range. After circling the area a time or two we headed towards the ship channel.

   Less than ¼ of a mile from our target the spoon got hit and the hook came back straightened out. I circled the area and found a ledge with fish showing. A dropped test line got slammed on the way down and a 12 pound grouper went in the box.

   We anchored on the ledge and caught twelve keeper grouper 10 to15 pounds and 50 or so smaller throw back gags. The limit is two gags per person so we were releasing big beautiful grouper most of the morning.

   After limiting out on gags we trolled back towards Passa Grille and caught four more kingfish to 15 pounds and more grouper including some keepers before heading home.

   Capt. Billy Miller and his party had the same great grouper action with his biggest grouper weighing 18 pounds and his biggest king weighing in at 25 pounds.

   On Millers two other grouper trips this week the hot gag bite continued to be off the charts with easy limits of big gags and kingfish.

   For the bigger gags Miller suggests bigger baits like hand sized pinfish, two frozen cigar minnows and a piece of squid on the same hook or a big Key West grunt head.

   The gag grouper mini season ends November 16.