With the boat’s engines running, Capt. Travis Palladeno has dock lines untied by 4 a.m. to make the 130-mile run into the Gulf of Mexico. What’s the payoff for that run? “You don’t have to throw any fish back,” he says. “In 20 years, I’ve never caught an undersize red grouper or gag in deep water.”Anchoring in 300- to 600-foot depths, Palladeno fills his fish box with 30- to 80-pound gags, 20-pound red snapper and 10-pound scamps — all much larger than found in shallow water.Whether chunking for yellowfin along the canyons off New England, anchoring for white seabass off Southern California or bottomfishing in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s surprisingly easy to drop 1,800 feet of 58-inch nylon, 40 feet of 58-inch chain and a 45-pound Danforth anchor, and later retrieve that hardware without ...![extreme-anchoring-main]()
