Snook action is going extremely well around our beautiful beaches right now. During the early morning and later afternoon fishing the beach troughs that run parallel to the beaches is a great idea. During the day, if you can find a beach with light traffic there is still plenty of actively feeding snook, but it takes a little bit of effort to find them. At night, the snook stack up in the passes and around dock lights, bridge lights and anywhere that concentrates the bait and allows them to idle out of the current and ambush passing baits. Lately the pass crabs have been the best option, but you can use large shrimp if you can find them and good-sized pigfish work well too.

Redfish action has been really concentrated on those mangrove shorelines. Especially at higher tides right up in the mangroves. If you fish cut dead bait close to the mangroves, you can sometimes lure them out. Also, flipping weedless baits up under the mangroves works well too. There is some fish moving around deeper flats, hanging on edges and docks adjacent to these areas too.

Trout are all about deeper water right now that 5-8ft range is a good place to look if you can find deeper flats. Also, bridges, docks and piers around the passes and beaches works well too. We have even seen trout hanging on those deeper residential dock lines closer to moving water or flats.

Pompano are still biting well out on the beaches and those sandier passes. We are seeing quite a few caught around local bridges too. Using live shrimp on the bottom is always a good option, but sandfleas work well too. Pompano jigs bouncing along the bottom is good way to hunt them down.

Tarpon are on the backside of their spawn, but we are still seeing a few around the pass and along the beaches. They love those pass crabs when we have these large outbound tides. Fishing at night around bridge lights is an effective way to find them too but landing them around structure is tough. Finding them on the beach makes it a little easier, but they are extremely leader shy and easily spooked.

Flounder action has been decent this past week. Many are catching them around the mangroves trying to flip soft plastics into the depths of the brush to target redfish and trout pulling out the occasional flounder. We are seeing them around local docks, piers, bridges, and jetties too on the sandy bottom areas.

Red grouper action on the ten hour all day has been pretty steady, nothing crazy but we are seeing handfuls on most trips. Especially when we have anglers heavily targeting them through the trip, they seem to be most common. However, you may fish a whole trip and only get one or two keepers with a lot of those seventeen to nineteen inch prevalent in the near shore waters. The deeper we get the bigger and more common the keeper sized fish seem to be. The hot bait lately has been a whole frozen squid.

Mangrove snapper action is going well on cut threadfin and a double snell rig. Lighter tackle is good to target the mangroves near shore like 30lb or 40lb floro and around 3-4ot hooks. We are also seeing a lot of lane snapper mixed in with the mangroves and that is a great way to catch them too with smaller chunks of threadfin. However, the live shrimp is a great option for both lanes and mangroves too. You can fish the shrimp on a snell rig on a Carolina rig set up, or you could use the knocker rig hogfish set up too.

The vermillion have been steady on the all day too since we are typically fishing around sixty to hundred foot targeting the mangroves, lanes and a few red grouper. We are seeing some good numbers of them on live shrimp and squid chunks.

Hogfish action has been around, but not something you can count on. We are seeing a handful here and there on the half days. Ten-hour trips sometime get one or two, but nothing to write home about. However, once October rolls around and the cold fronts return, we will see that action steadily increase as water temps decrease.

The Flying HUB 2 is on a hot streak of gag grouper catching, not even fishing but catching! They are pulling up some really good sized fish using larger dead baits like whole squid and bunk chunks of porgy or mullet. Bonita strips lately have been a big hit targeting the bigger gag grouper too. Live bait will work well but lately we have been seeing the red grouper, gag grouper and red snapper all targeting the bigger dead baits more actively.

The red snapper won’t quit either, on both the flying HUB 2 and our 39 hour trips we are seeing a very steady boat limit of red snapper. We have had one or two slower 39 hour trips dealing with tough currents and lots of storms prior to and around the new moon, but since then the currents have decreased and subsided substantially. That has helped us really dial in on the big red snapper as we follow the biomass around as season continues.

Scamp grouper have been regularly caught offshore too. Especially this time of year while more frequently fishing around that or close to that two hundred foot mark it has really made it more common for us to see these fish. Some of the scamp we are seeing are pushing closer to 15-16lbs and we have had a half dozen or more in this range which is a huge scamp for our area in that shallow of water. We typically catch these guys while fishing for mangroves or red snapper with whole or cut threadfin or a medium sized to smaller pinfish.

Mangrove snapper have been consistent offshore for us as of late. We are seeing a decent average size too. Mostly on the double snell rigged threadfin chunks, but we see some big ones come up on the smaller to medium live pinfish too.