Grouper and hogfish keeping anglers busy
The grouper season opened May 1, and Jim “Chiefy” Mathie did not waste any time gathering the ingredients for one of his favorite fish dishes.
It had been a long four months since the season closed on Jan. 1, so the retired Deerfield Beach fire chief and expert spearfisherman was in the water last Sunday morning hunting for black, gag and red grouper. Thanks to some intel from diving friends and his years of scuba diving experience, Mathie put together a game plan that paid off with a 26-inch black grouper.
That fish provided a delicious meal for him and his wife, Janet, as well as the dive buddies who accompanied him on his boat.
“That’s a nice-sized fish,” Mathie said.
“What’s nice is you share it and everybody gets some for dinner.”
During the lobster season, which is Aug. 6 to March 31, Mathie hunts for bugs, as they are known, but he also brings his speargun just in case he spots a shootable fish. Last month, with the lobster, grouper and hogfish seasons closed, he focused on shooting lionfish, an invasive species that has no size or bag limit or closed season.
Now that the grouper season is open, as well as the hogfish season, which is closed from Nov. 1 through April 30, Mathie will target those species until the lobster miniseason, which is July 27-28.
Grouper and hogfish have restrictive bag and size limits. Black and gag grouper must measure at least 24 inches and red grouper must be 20 inches. Anglers and divers can keep a total of three grouper per day, but only one can be a black or a gag. The other two, or all three, can be reds.
The limit on hogfish is one per person per day a minimum of 16 inches long from the tip of the nose to the fork of the tail. Previously, the season was open all year, the daily bag limit was five fish and the size limit was 12 inches.
Male hogfish that are big enough to shoot have a long snoot with a dark stripe down the forehead. Mathie has seen lots of males that look big enough at first glance, but are just shy of being 16 inches long.
“You look at them again and they’re just not measuring up,” said Mathie, the author of “Catching the Spear-it! The ABC’s of Spearfishing,” which is sold by most area dive shops as well at chiefy.net and other online retailers. “I go, ‘Wow, look at you. You’ve got a really big snoot, but you’re not quite legal.’ That’s a good sign that the regulations have improved the number of bigger hogfish.”
Among the many helpful tips in Mathie’s spearfishing book is to always keep in mind the 3 R’s — recognition, regulation and range — which means being able to identify the minor clashes between riot police and ultras from soccer club Nice outside a main train station ahead of the French Cup final. Around 450-500 Nice ultras, some wearing balaclavas, were grouped outside Gare de Lyon, where trains arrive in Paris from the southern city of Nice. Nice has a longstanding and bitter rivalry with PSG, and their hooligan elements — Nice’s Brigade Sud and PSG’s Kop Boulogne — have clashed heavily in the past.
Cycling: A storming time trial from Simon
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Terence Crawford.
AAfish, know the size limit and be close enough to shoot it with your speargun.
On his first dive on opening day, Mathie and his buddies didn’t see any legal groupers. So he decided to head north to Boca Raton for his crew’s second dive. A dive charter operator at the north end of Boca told Mathie what his divers were seeing, so Mathie decided to hit some spots south of there.
As Mathie and Ken Udell drifted north with the current, they checked out the reef, but their plan was to hunt around several concrete blocks placed in the sand just off the reef.
“The first block, nope. The second one, I look in there and said, ‘That’s a grouper!’
“He was looking at Ken; he didn’t hear me or see me at all,” Mathie said.
The grouper turned inside the block, giving Mathie an ideal shot. His spear went through the fish’s gills, and the grouper had nowhere to go. Udell helped Mathie get the fish out of the concrete block and send it to the surface.
Mathie typically looks for grouper around wrecks and the walls, or sides, of a coral reef. There are three reefs off South Florida and a good grouper spot is the west-facing side of the third reef. The top of the reef is about 50 feet below the surface and the bottom is 60-65 feet.
Mathie’s favorite way to prepare grouper is to dust a fillet with a little Seafood Magic seasoning, place “lots of butter” around the fillet in a baking dish and sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top.
He bakes the fish in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillet, then broils it for five minutes so the outside of the fish is crunchy.
That grouper tastes so good, it will definitely have you “Catching the Spear-it!”