Inshore FIshing Report
Snook action is the headline inshore right now with huge numbers of fish back inside the pass, but they are still far from their crazy concentration we see in the summer. We are already seeing them on the beaches too, which is great to see the spread already. They are taking the shrimp, grunts and more live bait wise when they are eating and the soft plastics, swim baits, and plugs for artificial baits. However, it is important to time your trip right around the solunars for your best chance at a snook. We are seeing them bite best just before sunrise.
Sheepshead are still pretty heavy around the pass and local bridges, but we are starting to see more of the mangroves showing up as the water warms. We typically see the sheepshead thin out and the mangroves start to take over once we get into later spring.
Pompanos are around the pass, mostly being caught around the bridge, jetty and beaches. We are seeing them caught on live shrimp and the pompano jigs. The banana jigs and even nekid ball jigs work well too!
Flounders have been active around the bridge and dock but have not seen anything of any real size of late. Most are being caught on live shrimp on the bottom or soft plastics working slowly on the bottom.
Tarpon have started to show up too often being spotted rolling in the pass in the morning or late afternoon and stacked up around the fenders at night in the bridge lights hammering the plentiful threadfins.
Sharks have really shown back up too with lots of bonnets, blackfins and spinners being caught lately around the bridge, jetty and beaches.
Nearshore Fishing Report
We are seeing the red grouper bite pick up for us quite a bit right now with some nice action coming on the live pinfish and big threadfin with the tail cut. We are seeing them on cut squid strips and also on the bonita strips too. The red grouper action near shore around 60lb test works well, and you can even use 40-50lb if you wanted to make sure you get the bite. We are typically seeing them on the 5-6ot hooks near shore right now.
The hogfish bite has died down a bit, but we are still getting them quite a bit on our ten-hour all-day trips, and a few here and there on the 5-hour half days. However, we have seen a marked decline in the hogfish action and as the red grouper bite picks up, we have been fishing a bit deeper targeting the hogfish a bit less or at least not the whole trip as we typically do in the cooler months while we are getting lots of the hogfish.
Lane snappers are steady near shore right now about 60-100ft of water and into our offshore waters. We are seeing some good mangrove snapper action too; they are biting on shrimp mostly or small chunks of the threadfin. Great time to get some good eating snapper and plentiful grey snapper or white grunts and porgies near shore right now.
The mackerel are thick near shore from the beaches out to around twenty miles. We have seen the kingfish really show up this week heavily too. Great to see all the pelagic action near shore making things even more exciting while fishing near shore.
Offshore Fishing Report
The 39 hour that came in this past Thursday morning crushed the mangrove snapper! They had a big pile of vermillion, yellowtail, porgies, and a few red groupers and almacos too! The pelagic bite did not cooperate for us, but that was likely due to such turbulent weather conditions making it impossible to troll with any success. Also, we did not get to do much flat lining due to the winds and seas as well. However, the red grouper bite was solid, and we had tons of snapper. The mangrove bite was so hot that everyone who was fishing at all caught a two-day limit of snapper! The dead bait was the steady action, but the biggest mangroves came up on smaller pinfish. We are seeing the pinfish stay at the top of the bigger bait options to get you the bigger quality fish, but we are seeing the most action on the dead baits offshore. The mangrove snapper size is all over the map, we are seeing some average to smaller up to the larger 8-9lb models too. The yellowtail snapper is prolific too on both recent 39 hours we have seen big numbers of these good eating fun to catch fish. For red groupers, the live bait has been working well but the big dead baits work well too. We are seeing them take squid strips, big threads, or even bonita strips.
The extreme trips are going well too, we are seeing lots of big red groupers caught while offshore with a steady bite of mangroves. Now that the 20fathom closure is over that provides us the flexibility to run wherever we want again on all of our trips and really opens the door for Flying HUB 2 to fish harder around the region. We are looking forward to some nice weather windows to find the scamp and fat mangroves with the big boy red grouper out deeper now.
