Snook are thick around the passes, on the beaches, and still active on the flats too. At night look to passes, bridges, and dock lines while during the day look to deeper areas like the passes, flats, or on the beaches working the trough lines. The new moon will help the night time dock light and bridge light fishing action for snook this upcoming week. Plus, often it means a better incoming tide bite too.

Redfish love hanging below the bait around the dock lights and bridge lights on or near the bottom. We are seeing them around the mangrove shore lines during the day or oyster bars as well. Especially mid to high tide times and that incoming tide should flush baits to these areas too.

Trout action going well on deeper flats during the day, edges of shallower flats as well, but they are definitely most active in the early morning or late afternoon. During the heat of the day its tougher to find these active trout unless you find a deep spot or hole. Shadowed areas is another good place to look if your fishing during the day like bridges, dock lines, under the mangrove cover.

Tarpon action going on still around the area and this new moon should bring a lot of our remaining fish to area bridges at night. During the day expect them around the mouth of the bay and outside the passes, or on the beaches.

Pompano are still biting well around the area, just tricky to find them in decent concentrations. However, if you can find a hot spot they are biting well on the live shrimp on the bottom, sand fleas, or the pompano jigs.

Still struggling with smaller shrimp in the area bait shops, but we are starting to see a shift to a little better size. Once we start to see some bigger shrimp around we will be able to shift some focus near shore back to trying to target some hogfish in a bit shallower. However, we are still catching some nice hogfish but they are a little picky overall especially with smaller than normal shrimp which is prevalent and expected this time of year. We use around 20-30lb leader and around 1-2oz egg sinkers to a 3-4ot hook rigged knocker rig style on a 3000-5000 series spinning rod and reel combo with around 20-30lb braid.

Mangrove snapper action near shore is going well and if we get some overcast days around this new moon we should see some stellar near shore and offshore mangrove snapper action. We are still going to get them at night offshore on our long range trips but the new moon makes the near shore night time fishing tough. That’s why we don’t offer our 12 hour night snapper around the new moon.

Red grouper are spotty but present near shore. You have to work for them as we only see one or three here a few there and just have to keep sticking and moving to put together a nice catch of keeper red grouper. A lot of those 14-18 inch red grouper are common when fishing inside 100ft of water near shore. Once offshore, past 100ft we still have to sort through a lot of smaller red grouper but the keeper sized fish become more common.

Gag grouper fishing is going well offshore, but is very tricky near shore. We have to really get lucky to find good numbers of cooperative gag grouper this time of year when the water is hot. It’s possible to get them near shore this time of year but it’s a big challenge.

Red snapper season continues on with some good action going on offshore for these fish. We have until end of day august 18^th to catch em and the bite is steady offshore. We are working a little hard to put together limits of the red snapper but we are still getting them regularly. The hot bait lately has been bigger dead baits like squid strips, bonita strips, or the bigger dead bait we catch while offshore. However, red snapper love those squirrelfish or sand perch that we catch in our traps and near shore on our 5 hour trips occasionally.

Gag grouper fishing has been steady for us offshore lately too with some really big fish biting. However, once they bite you have to land them which can prove to be tricky offshore. Especially if you aren’t using heavier leaders and bigger tackle. We recommend around 80lb minimum if your dropping a big dead bait or live bait for the gags, but really around 100lb is better. If the bite is hot and I plan to target the gags with big baits I would even use 125lb if they are chewing well. Its when the bite slows, that’s when you have to dial back your leader size but then it makes it trickier to land them successfully.

Red grouper are biting well out in deeper water and they love to mix in with the red snapper. We are seeing some really truly large red grouper lately with a few approaching 30lbs caught this past week.

Scamp grouper are more common this time of year when we are fishing deeper close to 200ft often for these red snapper. We see these guys mostly on medium pinfish or the cut threadfins, but the slow pitch and vertical jigs work well for scamp too.

Mahi mahi are around offshore right now and we have seen some really nice fish caught this week while trolling, flat line fishing and also pitch baits when we see them roll by while bottom fishing. Keep a rod rigged and ready and your eyes peeled while offshore.