Inshore Fishing Report
Redfish action is just dumb right now, super hot around the area. If you are able get out there to any of the back bay, upper bay or even outer bay flats, mangrove shorelines or oyster bars and your chances of getting a redfish is super high. They aren’t as active as they were around johns pass, but they’ve concentrated a bit further back into the bays. Great time to get them on a variety of baits too, they are really actively feeding in concentrated numbers. The new moon should have them concentrated around some dock lights and bridge lights at night on the bottom too!
Sheepshead are also getting more and more prolific and aggressive around the area too. They have taken over much of the hard structures where the mangrove snapper have dominated. They are looking for small pieces of shrimp or fiddler crabs on smaller hooks with minimal weights.
Mangrove snapper are still around but the murky water and big fronts maybe what finally disburses them around the area more. They were still pretty active around the mangroves, docks, bridges, jetties and rock piles the last week ahead of this rocky weather.
Trout action is going well too and seemingly starting to heat up as the waters continue to cool off. We should see them get a bit more shallow and aggressive as our area waters cool. They tend to start moving a bit slower but feed well in pockets across the flats.
Pompano are still around too, we are seeing some good numbers if your able to find some cleaner clearer waters. Especially around the sandy edges, cuts, channels or the beaches. Pompano jigs are a go to, but live shrimp freelined on the bottom or using minimal weight works well too. Some even have luck using soft plastics, but its not the typical targeted method.
Triple tail are showing up in good numbers and we should only see more as the crab traps continue to pour out as we prepare for the oct 15th start of our stone crab season. The stone crab trap buoys proving a great little hiding spot for our near shore triple tail along our beaches and back bay waters. We also will find them on the markers and even sometimes around docks and bridges. However, floating debris and buoys are most commonly a good spot to find a hovering triple tail waiting to ambush passing baits.
Late season tarpon persisting in the area pretty heavily too. We are seeing good numbers of tarpon around the area still with plenty being caught and released still around the mouth of Tampa bay and local area bridges.
**REMEMBER, please help spread the word and knowledge on what to do if you hook or entangle a bird. NEVER CUT THE LINE, stay calm and reel in the bird and get all your line back and dehook them and release. Never leave any line in the water, if you accidentally hook a dock make sure to break the line off at the hook never cut your line. Seabirds in the area are more and more often showing up with line hanging off them and we are in danger of losing access to fishing areas due to this. While anytime a bird is in danger or having issues is concerning too, but a wave of support of closing areas to fishing due to negative bird interactions is extremely concerning to an already dwindling number of areas you can fish around Tampa Bay from a shoreline, dock, bridge or pier! Check out the NEW podcast we did with salt strong on this issue – https://www.saltstrong.com/articles/shutting-down-fishing-at-busy-pier/ **
Nearshore Fishing Report
Hogfish action continues to dominate our near shore report, but now we have the mackerel showing up too giving the hogfish a run for the top spot. We are pumped to see the mackerel showing up in decent numbers for their fall run and we are looking forward to hopefully good kingfish numbers behind the mackerel. Typically, they will follow the moons so potentially this next full moon will bring us a good push of the kingfish into our near shore and shallower beachside waters. However, for now its mostly just mackerel with the occasional schoolie sized kingfish mixed in. We are mostly seeing them while trolling in and out on our 5 hour half day, 39 hour and 44 hour trips. However, you can catch them around the mouth of the pass too especially if you can get out just off the pass channel. You can most of the time catch plenty even from a kayak outside of most any pass of the area. They are looking for fast moving flashy baits retrieved or trolled pretty decently fast. We typically catch them using around six inch drone spoons around 12-18ft behind a number one or number two planner. We are normally moving around 7-9kts when trolling and that speed works well with this set up. If you are trolling slower, you can do some other options too along the beaches like smaller lipped plugs, or even some live or dead bait trolling. However, we mostly stick to pulling hardware near shore in the form of planners and spoons.
Hogfish are coming up well on our 10 hour all day and 5 hour half day but the private fishing charters really allow us to dial in on them well. WE are seeing the hogfish biting on around 30lb test leaders, 3-4ot hooks and around 1-2oz weights. Typically, we are using a knocker rig with live shrimp or one of our Hubbard’s Marina banana jigs we have made custom for us by Roggie’s Rigs. The live shrimp is a go to option for the hogfish but you can get them on rock shrimp, sandfleas, and even fiddler crabs.
Lane snapper action is going well for us on our near shore trips, especially our 10 hour all day where we are catching good numbers of lane snapper. They are great eating fish and we are seeing a larger average size each week. They continue to impress us with their aggression and concentrations. They love around 30-40lb leaders and bite well on 3-4ot hooks and lighter weights. They often come up while targeting hogfish, but we see them biting on a variety of bait like squid and threadfin.
Mangrove snapper are also going well near shore too, but they are more common and larger out deep. However, in relation to typical near shore fishing we are seeing good action. Typically on a good ten hour all day we will see 100-200 lanes and around 20-40 mangrove snapper with 1-3 dozen hogfish mixed in too. Then we always have plenty of heads and tails too like the grey snapper and porgies. However, if you want to target mangrove snapper I would be using the hogfish technique with a knocker rig and maybe some small chunks of cut threadfin in addition to some shrimp.
Offshore Fishing Report
Gag grouper is still the focus for us through the weekend, but as they wrap up we are changing gears to focus on the other varieties of fish we can go target and harvest. People are asking more and more what we can get once gags are closed so I wanted to briefly explain all the other species we are seeing right now in addition to the gags. For example, we are catching scamp grouper, strawberry grouper, rock hind, triggerfish, mangrove snapper, yellowtail snapper, mutton snapper, lane snapper, vermillion snapper, porgies, almacos, kingfish, tuna, mahi and even wahoo showing up.
The mangrove snapper fishing has been going well for us and we have some areas really dialed in where big prolific mangrove snapper are being caught well. Plus, on top of them we are seeing good numbers of yellowtail and some really nice occasional mutton snapper. The double snell rig with the cut threadfins have been a great option to use while targeting the snapper species. However, a small to medium pinfish works well to get a bigger mangrove. Once gags close, we can really get after the snapper and using lighter tackle to dial in on prolific mangrove snapper!
Pelagic fishing is really picking up offshore right now! We are seeing more and more action up on the surface and to the point it gets unavoidable with kingfish, mahi and tuna taking our dead bait and live bait as we drop it down and reel it up while bottom fishing. Trolling and flat line fishing become more and more popular right now as we get lighter and lighter loads of guests. This is a good time of year to come out if you want a chance to do some more unique styles of fishing, like flat line fishing or using more spj etc.
Triggerfish are still open and were seeing big numbers of those great eating fish too. They love something that is a bit longer, skinny and chewy for bait like a strip of squid or bonita around 3 inches or so about a quarter inch wide on a smaller hook like 5ot or so.
**REMEMBER, when fishing deeper near shore and especially offshore the Descend Act is in effect so when in federal waters you must have a descending device or venting tool ‘rigged and ready’ so be prepared with that venting tool if you know exactly where to vent the fish, but if you don’t here’s some helpful tips – https://bit.ly/3L5HTnv Plus, keep in mind using a descending device is super easy and doesn’t take much practice or as much precision as venting does, and right now you can get over $100 in FREE DESCENDING DEVICE GEAR by visiting this link and taking a short course on barotrauma mitigation techniques that will help more fish survive! The course is only about 10-15 minutes, and it will really help you preserve, protect, and proliferate our offshore fishery so spread the word -> https://returnemright.org/
