Inshore Fishing Report
Redfish action is the highlight inshore right now with tons of actively feeding fish from the beaches to the back bay. We are seeing big schools of fish around mid to low tide in the upper bay and back bay areas. During mid to high tides, suggest looking for schools of big mullet in those same areas to find the redfish. Around the pass, we are seeing them mostly around the mangrove islands and oyster bars. They do hang around the dock lights and bridge lights but mostly on or near the bottom and they are a bit trickier to get chewing compared to the plentiful trout.
Pompano have been fairly active around the beaches and passes, but the back bay grass flat edges are a great place to find them. We are seeing pompano pretty active over the bay area mostly on the doc’s goofy jigs or other pompano style jigs.
Sheepshead are super active around the area and extremely concentrated on local docks, piers, bridges, and jetties. We even see them around the rock piles and seawalls too. However, it’s a great time to get plentiful sheepshead throughout our area on smaller pieces of cut shrimp and even small crabs, barnacles or sandfleas. Great time to target them when the water gets murky around the fronts. If your offshore trips with us get canceled due to cold front weather, it’s a great option to stay on the docks and target the sheepshead.
Snook action is pretty much totally receded to the back bay and upper bay areas this time of year. They are fully into the wintertime pattern now with most of those fish hanging out around the flats, mangroves, creek, river and bayou mouths. They are really feeding actively on the white bait, but will take large cut baits and even live shrimp too.
Trout are fired up around the area with lots of aggressive trout feeding around our local area. They love soft plastics, live shrimp, live white bait and a variety of options. They are typically pretty grouped together around those areas they can have some cover and feed actively.
Flounder action is going well around the area, but they are closed through November 30th for a spawning closure. They are pretty large lately around the pass and even around the jetty and docks too. They love ambushing baits that pass to close to the bottom.
Nearshore Fishing Report
Hogfish action is going super well around the area, we are seeing good action on our 10hr and a few on our 5 hours too. The near shore private fishing charters are really doing well for the hogfish along with the ten hour all day. If you want the best chances of catching a hogfish I would do a private fishing charter, but the 10hr is a great option too, or even the 5 hour gives you a chance at them! The live shrimp is a great option bait wise with around 30lb leader and 3-4ot hook and minimal 1-2oz weights. They are curious creatures, and they love some light tackle and live shrimp but will take small crabs, sand fleas and even rock shrimp too.
Lane snapper are super thick near shore too! We are seeing lots of lane snappers while targeting the hogfish, and they love the shrimp but will also take cut thread fins and even squid too. The lane snappers are super prolific and very aggressive when we are fishing around 60-100ft of water near shore, but we catch them even shallower than ever before.
Mangrove snapper action is surprisingly active near shore. They are also surprisingly large for our near shore waters too. They are best out deeper closer to that 80-100ft range and beyond, but we are seeing them consistently even as shallow as 40-60ft of water they just get more concentrated and larger on average the deeper we travel. They are all about the cut threadfin on the double Snell rigs, but we catch a bunch while targeting hogfish with shrimp too.
Mackerel action is hot on the beaches, around the passes, and all the way through the near shore waters. We are not seeing any notable number of kingfish, but the mackerel haven’t let us down this year. Hoping we get a push of kingfish on this moon like we would typically see, but we just haven’t had the water temps or the water we want to have the kingfish get thick for us.
Offshore Fishing Report
Mangrove snapper, scamp grouper, yellowtail snapper, vermillion snapper, strawberry grouper, mutton snapper, porgies, almaco jacks, triggerfish and many more are still open offshore right now. Plus, we have the potential for pelagics like the kingfish, blackfin tuna, mahi, and maybe even wahoo. This is that time of year when we have much less people on board too, and due to that, we have lots of flexibility to have flat lines out. Fishing lighter tackle than normal and doing things like slow pitch jig fishing all over with lighter jigs and more! It’s a fun time of year to get out with plenty of elbow room, plenty of good fish to catch, it’s not too hot and not too cold and it’s an awesome opportunity to try something new and get plenty of help and attention from the captains and crew. While this is holding true some near shore too, it’s the offshore long-range trips that are truly seeing more consistent lighter loads.
Mangrove snapper fishing would be my target with lighter tackle fishing around 30-40lb leaders and double snelled 5-6ot hooks with cut threadfin is a great idea. I like to cut the head off the threadfin and the tail and trim the belly out leaving me a nice, long and skinny strip of threadfin meat oozing some nice oil and scent. This will work to get the mangroves fired up and you will often catch them along with a litany of the other species mentioned above.
Also, I would bring with me an even lighter tackle set up with 20-30lb leader and may even drop down to a single hook with a smaller chunk of the threadfin and a knocker rig, or fish a big live shrimp. These are a great way to target some bigger snapper up in the water column and it’s a blast to fight a big 5-8lb mangrove on super light tackle up in the water column.
Having a spj combo with around 80-250 gram jigs maybe even some of the 60-100 gram micros and around 20-30lb braid and around an eight-foot piece of 40-50lb floro on top of the braid ahead of the jig. We have lots of the rods, reels, jigs, and tackle in our shop if you want to come down and get outfitted for a long-range adventure or we can help you find what we recommend and what works well for you to buy elsewhere.
