FISHING By Capt. Dylan Hubbard
HubbardsMarina.com • 727.393.1947
INSHORE
Redfish action has really kicked up. They are biting at night around the bridges and passes. During the day we find them on the flats, oyster bars, docks, and mangrove shorelines. They love cut pinfish or thread fins on the bottom. Artificially, those slow-moving plastic paddle tails and hard jerk
baits work.
Black drum love this dirty water and we have seen a few nice ones caught recently around the local docks and bridges on shrimp small crabs or thread fin, weighted to the bottom, for bait. Black drum are great eating when small.
Flounder fishing has been steady, nothing crazy but a few caught around the local docks, seawalls, and edges of the flats. Shrimp on the bottom work very well for the flounder or slow-moving soft plastics are great options too! Trout were biting decently before the weather.
The mangrove snapper continues biting while the water stays warm. Lighter tackle and small hooks with a small piece of shrimp are a great way to target them and sheepshead, which bite better when the water cools, even behind the fronts when the water is murky.
NEAR SHORE
Hog fish get excited and are more aggressive as the water cools. Find them around 30-70ft of water on lighter tackle around 20-30lb fluoro leader and around 4ot hooks. We catch them using light knocker rigs, jig heads or the Nekid ball jigs, all tipped with shrimp, on small ledges, rock piles and flat hard bottom near sea fans. Where you get one hogfish there’s plenty more. The gag grouper bite also gets better as the water cools. They love live pinfish, pigfish or squirrelfish on 60-80lb fluoro leader and about 6-7ot hooks. Bigger reels with plenty of drag are a good idea when targeting gag grouper.
Mackerel and king fish still around for now; they love that 72-78 degree water temperature range. As long as we are in that window, we should have plentiful mackerel and some nice kingfish mixed in. The kingfish will slowly fade as the water cools while mackerel hang around a bit longer. They love fast moving flashy lures or free lined white bait. For bigger kingfish bigger baits are required and we recommend a kingfish stinger rig. You can find out how to tie one up easily on the ‘“ishing tips and tricks” page at HubbardsMarina.com. Click “fishing trip videos” then find “fishing tips and tricks” page in the submenu. Use blue runners or big threadfins for the best kingfish flat line bait.
OFFSHORE
Right now is a great time for gag grouper offshore. These guys really get aggressive as the water cools and they tend to be in higher concentrations around the ledges, peaks, wrecks and springs. They are found up to around 300ft, but most anglers will target around 120-200ft of water with great success. Amberjack are open up until the end of October. These guys are mostly out deep beyond around 140ft of water hanging on springs, peaks, or wrecks almost exclusively, but we will find them on the big ledges too if the bait is there to keep them around. This is a great time for mangrove snapper too. We don’t have high numbers of the mangroves, but we typically see decent numbers with a larger overall size this time of year from around 120-180ft of water. They love those threadfin or sardine plugs on the double snelled 6ot hooks with around 40-60lb fluoro leader.