Hubbard’s Marina and fishing charters are closed for at least two weeks March 23rd – April 7th. They report a lot of the mackerel through our inshore areas right now. Especially around the passes, jetties, just off the beaches and around the bait schools up in the bays. Unfortunately, the Skyway fishing piers are currently closed, along with Fort de Soto piers and Big Pier 60 due to COVID-19 but there’s still local jetties and seawalls you can find to cast for these fun to catch fish. If you have your own boat fishing around the skyway, or local passes is a great way to target these fish.
Trout bite has been hot this past week around the area. They love those soft plastics around the edges of the flats, mangrove shorelines and residential docks during the day. At night, great spots to target them are the dock lights or bridge lighters where you can find the bait. They will eat some live shrimp or white bait if you don’t like to use the lures to catch them. Keep in mind though, snook, redfish and trout are all still catch and release only here.
Redfish bite was also pretty steady this past week around the residential docks. They love those soft plastics, gold spoons, or suspended twitch baits for lure choices. However, they will eat live shrimp, white bait or small pinfish if you prefer live bait options.
Sheepshead are still biting very well through the area and these guys are able to be kept so more anglers are targeting them right now to try and catch something to take home to eat. Small piece of shrimp and around a 1ot hook and 20lb leader and the lightest weight possible is my favorite method. However, cut clams or oysters will work well too.
Pompano are around bridges near the passes working the sandy drop offs along the edges of the bridge channels. Flounder are biting decently in sandy potholes, around docks in passes.
Near Shore
The hogfish bite is still going well near shore too but slowing down as the water warms. The kingfish and mackerel bite is definitely the big news near shore right now with tons of kingfish showing up in our area from around 30-90 foot of water. They love to go after live white bait or smaller blue runners on those kingfish stinger rigs. If you’d like to learn how to tie up one of these kingfish rigs with wire, we have a great fishing tips page on our site with a how to video on how to make up this rig. Here’s the link to that page hubbardsmarina.com/fishing-tips
Offshore
Mangrove snapper bite was off the chain in late March in around 120ft of water. They definitely were preferring 30-40lb leaders and the double snelled 5-6ot hooks and chunk of the threadfin plug. While targeting the mangroves like this we also caught plenty of large vermillion snapper, some big porgies, a few almaco jacks, and even some of the grouper too like the red grouper, scamp grouper, and those yummy strawberry groupers. We even had a 2.76lb red hind or strawberry grouper. This doesn’t sound like a monster but when most are 8-14 inches a nearly 22inch nearly 3lb one is a gigantic fish!