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Editor's note: ESPNOutdoors.com Fishing editor Ken Schultz also is a commentator for "BassCenter," which air Saturdays on ESPN2; look for his "Reel Speak" segment.

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GULFPORT, Fla. — If you swim on any beach in western Florida's Pinellas County, you have to be struck by the fact that you can wade quite a distance before getting into deep water. Indeed, the bottom slopes ever-so-gradually for miles before it finds a shelf, so anglers seeking pelagic species are known to run 90 or more miles for action.

I was watching the color sonar and Global Positioning System unit on Joe Saunders' boat as we headed westerly from St. Petersburg over calm waters toward a spot where he believed we'd catch enough bait for a day of reef fishing. The bottom of his chart recorder showed a slightly sloping pancake bottom.

A dozen or so miles offshore, in just 35 feet of water, we pulled up on a spot where a sunken weather buoy rested and used bottom-weighted, multi-hooked, bait-catching rigs to bring in dozens of scaled sardines and a few blue runners.

Then it was off for a long run much farther offshore where irregularities in the otherwise flat and slightly sloped bottom might harbor red snapper.

When we got to a reef nearly 40 miles offshore, in almost 100 feet of water, we anchored and quickly discovered that red snapper liked our lively sardines, which was hardly a surprise since these are what biologists call "opportunistic feeders," which, roughly translated, means "see food, eat food."

In 30 minutes we had a half-dozen, legal-size fish, plus a few released shorts. One in our party also lost something big and too tough to handle; the fish finned into craggy cover, where it broke off.

Popular, but problematic

Aboard with us was one of the most knowledgeable red snapper authorities — Phil Steele, administrator for the Sustainable Fisheries Division of the Southeastern office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Steele had in mind the same thing that the rest of us did: catching a few of the Gulf's best-eating fish. But he also was doing an unofficial assessment of what his agency terms a "recovering" species.

	“	Red snapper is probably the most contentious fishery in the Southeast. We've only been managing it since about 1990 and have a ways to go. ”
		— Phil Steele

A fish with low levels of fat and calories, the red snapper is one of the most valuable recreational and commercial fish throughout the Gulf; but like many saltwater fish, it may be loved too much.

The species is considered overexploited, meaning that the population is greatly below historic high levels that the Gulf enjoyed in the 1960s. The fish are rebounding, but getting their numbers back to where they used to be is a tremendous challenge.

"Red snapper is probably the most contentious fishery in the Southeast," Steele said. "We've only been managing it since about 1990 and have a ways to go.

"But more and more snappers are showing up in Florida waters, especially from the Panhandle down to the Tampa Bay area. It's been a slower rate of recovery from here down to the Florida Keys. But overall they're coming back."

In a nutshell, the problem has been overfishing and the impact of incidental bycatch and discarding of juvenile red snapper by the shrimp trawl fleet, particularly in the western Gulf.

Texas and Louisiana have the most commercial fishing for red snapper, while Alabama and Florida have the largest charter and head boat fleets for recreational fishing.

The recreational season for red snapper is from April 21 through October 31. The commercial season is divided into spring and fall sessions, the former beginning in February and the latter in October, with fishing allowed the first 10 days of each month.

"Everyone wants a year-round fishery," Steele said, "but we probably won't see that for decades."

The minimum size is 15 inches for commercial fishermen, and 16 inches for recreational anglers, who can keep a daily limit of four.

Many recreational anglers now are using circle hooks, as we did on this day. Sub-legal snappers, which we caught a few, don't get deeply impaled on circle hooks, so hooking-related mortality for fish that must be released is reduced.

Other species, too

When the action slowed we moved farther offshore, eventually winding up in 150 feet of water and fishing several places that had a hard bottom.

Adult red snappers concentrate around reefs, relatively confined areas of hard limestone bottom and irregular bottom formations.

Many of these are small in length and breadth, so finding them can be difficult — veterans have scores of such places stored as waypoints on their navigational gear so they can locate them more readily — and setting up properly to drift over them or fish on top of them is essential.

We anchored the boat to fish most effectively. Sardines or pilchards were plucked out of the livewell, impaled in the head with a circle hook and dropped to the bottom with a 6-ounce weight.

There's no need to make a hard hook set with this terminal gear; the circle hooks penetrate the mouth very well if you just reel tight and apply no-slack pressure.

We caught another eight or nine legal red snapper on these distant spots, the largest of which was about 21 inches long.

While red snappers were our primary catch, we also managed some other bottom-dwelling species, including a few red hinds and mangrove snappers, as well as a dandy gag grouper.

Steele hooked the latter near the end of the day, and it was clear from the more prolonged battle that he was onto a bigger fish. The gag exceeded 15 pounds and was the largest of this species he'd ever caught.

No doubt it would make a fine culinary compliment to the red snapper.

If you're going …

Pinellas County, which encompasses St. Petersburg and Clearwater, with Tampa Bay on its east and the Gulf of Mexico on its west, is as close as you can get to the action off western Florida. Numerous charter boats operate from different ports in the area and offer fishing for red snapper and other bottom-dwelling species, including the highly popular kingfish (which is usually caught closer to shore) and blue-water species. Click to this Web page for details about boats that specialize in this. For general area information, call the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Convention and Visitors Bureau at 877-352-3224 or visit their Web site. Information about red snapper issues and federal management activities can be found at the Southeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service Web site.

Game-fish profile

Species: Snapper, red (Lutjanus campechanus).

Other names: American red snapper, northern red snapper, mutton snapper.

In general: A member of the Lutjanidae family of snappers, the red snapper is one of the most-highly coveted of all reef fishes and often is the most-expensive fish per pound on the market. The white meat of the red snapper is superb and marketed fresh.

Identification: The red snapper is pinkish, scarlet or brick red on its head and upper body, and silvery whitish below. It has a long, triangular snout, a sharply pointed anal fin and a distinctively red iris. Young fish of less than 10 inches in length have a dusky spot below the soft dorsal fin at and above the midline, and the tail sometimes has a dark edge.

Size and age: Commonly reaching 1 to 2 feet, the red snapper may attain 3 feet and more than 35 pounds. The all-tackle world record is a 50¼-pound specimen caught in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana in 1996. Adults may live more than 20 years.

Distribution: Red snapper occur in the Gulf of Mexico and along the entire Atlantic Coast of the United States, as far north as Massachusetts, but rarely north of the Carolinas and less commonly in the Florida Keys. They are absent from the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Habitat: Adult fish are usually found over rocky or irregular bottom formations at depths of 60 to 400 feet, while young fish inhabit shallow waters over sandy or muddy bottoms.

Life history and behavior: Red snapper reach sexual maturity at age 2, or when 9 or 10 inches long; spawning occurs offshore from June to October or sometimes as early as April. They often intermingle with grunts and other snappers in schools. It takes 3 to 4 years for these fish to reach spawning size of 15 to 16 inches.

Food and feeding habits: Red snapper are opportunistic bottom feeders that prey on fishes, shrimps, crabs and worms.

For more fish species information, see "Ken Schultz's Fishing Encyclopedia," available through www.kenschultz.com.