In Shore – The cooling water seems to have the fish excited. Red tide seems to have finally relaxed. We had some young anglers on the dock this past week catching some nice snook using large live shrimp free-lined around the pilings. Also, the sheepshead were coming up when they were using smaller chunks of shrimp free-lined along side the dock’s structure. Still plenty of pompano being caught along the jetties of Johns Pass and the beaches from Madeira Beach to Pass-A-Grille. The sheepshead will become bigger, more aggressive and more prolific in the next few months. Also, the silver trout and whiting action should heat up as the water cools along the beaches and just off the beach with a long surf rod cast! While these whiting and silver trout love live shrimp, my favorite method to catch tons of silver trout is the double love lures popped along the sandy bottom just past the breakers along the beaches up to a mile from shore.
Near Shore – Gags, kings and hogs continue to get better. The kingfish are biting on the trollers. Here’s a video to show you how to tie up a kingfish stinger rig https://hubbardsmarina.com/fishing-tips/.
The best trolling lure lately forthe kings has been a rapala xrap magnum 30 with the red head and white body. The flat lines have been hit just using a dead threadfin floating in the current or under a balloon 6 – 8ft down. Captain Dave has had a pile of gag grouper nearly every 5, 8 and 10 hour private charter. On the longer private charters with more fishing time they are seeing piles of big gags in the 12-18 lb range. The best bait lately for the gags is just simply doubled-up threadfin herring. Also, besides the kings and gags, the hogfish are really picking up; nicely even on the party boat 5-hour half-days we are seeing 2-6 keeper hogs per trip.
The live shrimp on the lighter tackle like the 4ot hook and 30lb long fluoro leader with the 3/4oz knocker rig style set up has the best chances for nice hogfish and tons of other heads and tails like the big lanes and mangrove snapper that we have been seeing on the all day or the plentiful grey snapper (grunts) and occasional sea bass were seeing on the 5 hour half days.
Off Shore – More of the same offshore, the 39 hour trips are just piling up the mangrove snapper! Recent trips had enormous piles of mangrove snapper along with some fat yellow tails mixed in as well. The gag grouper bite was a little slower this trip but they still managed two dozen nice gags, a few scamp and a couple red grouper. The big kingfish and a few tuna showed up too. Most of the pelagic action was at night while mangrove snapper slaying we saw these big pelagics hitting the snapper chunked threadfins as they were being dropped down or retrieved from the bottom. It’s a great time to get offshore! Join us for the super-light 39 hour long range fishing adventures we have coming up at Hubbard’s Marina, to book now check out this link – https://hubbardsmarina.com/fishing-trip-reservations/.
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Fishing Report By Captain Mark & Dylan Hubbard
HubbardsMarina.com at John’s Pass (727) 393-1947