Inshore Fishing Report
Sheepshead are fired up around the area right now feeding well and the big front coming through Sunday night into Monday should fire them up even more. There’s another front seemingly right behind that one too so the water should get nice and chilly and stirred up. These are both going to help the sheepshead feed more heavily and concentrate around area docks, piers, bridges, jetties, and rock piles in the bay. Couple that with the new moon water flows and it should be a great time to target the sheepies Monday – Thursday this coming week. Prior to the weather, over this weekend I would focus on the redfish, trout and snook. Perhaps the flounder if you can find a few, and keep your eyes peeled for triple tail and mackerel action.
The redfish action is still going well around the area, but we are seeing less prolific schools and a much more sluggish fish overall. The cooler waters have slowed their aggression a bit and spread them out a bit, but still going well overall. This is still a great time of year for redfish, but they start to move to more docklines and start to be more conscious of where that wind is blowing. They love a good wind protected mangrove shoreline, oyster bed, or grass flat. They will also push up into the shallows more as the water cools too. Finally, a great winter time haunt I love to find them in the back bay is around those residential canal dock lines especially towards the tips where there is some water flow, bait, and if you can find the good areas a flat nearby. Remember, as the water cools they get a bit more lethargic so if your working artificials, you have to slow the bait down quite a bit compared to your more aggressive faster retrieves through spring and summer. I like imitation shrimp like the DOA for this reason, they have to go slow and the fish will react to them just like a live shrimp. While its not a full on crustacean bite yet, it will be there soon as the water temp creeps down that white bait will get deeper and harder to find on the flats and in the shallows and our redfish, trout, snook, flounder and most any inshore fish will start to feed more on the shrimp, crabs and other crustaceans they can find.
Trout action is going well in the shallows right now, especially around 1-4ft of water. They move shallower, but get normally more concentrated aggressive, and sometimes you see some big girls this time of year when the water cools. Trout love the cold weather and seem to thrive compared to snook who hate the cold and really slow down and don’t feed well. Trout are hyped right now on most any live bait from small pinfish, to white bait and even shrimp year around. They are also taking the soft plastics and lately the soft plastic ‘little john’ style bait is a go to for trout on the flats for many inshore fisherman on a super light sixteenth ounce jig head.
Snook are biting okay if you can find them on a good time, tide or area. They are tucked into the back bay waters pretty good right now with the cold weather. They love the creeks, rivers and bayous. If you can find a deep hole around the mouths of one of these areas and soak a big dead bait or the right live bait with perhaps a cut tail, you will hook into some big old slob snook. Besides that, you can find schoolie sized fish around the sun drenched seawalls and mangrove shorelines in the mid mornings if they were wind protected through the night, or in the afternoons once things get sunny they start to move around and feed more. Wind protection means if you have a north wind and find a shoreline that runs perpendicular to the wind and your able to fish the south side of that shoreline you are fishing an area that is ‘protected from the wind’ this means you don’t have wind pushing water right against the shoreline and that typically means a bit warmer water will be able to accumulate there, thus making the snook more active there. If you can find this, coupled in an area that is getting drenched with sun, then typically those two things will add together to increase exponentially the chances of finding actively feeding fish when the water temps are down.
Triple tail are still thick around the area on markers, buoys, bridges, docks, floating debris and virtually anywhere they can hang out and ambush passing baits. Often times, you will spot them suspended laying nearly on their sides getting sun and staying nearly motionless waiting for unsuspecting baitfish or other prey items like shrimp to venture to close to their hiding areas. They make a great sight fish target if your casting accuracy is high,, and are really good to eat if they are large enough to keep. However, they have a minimum size limit now of eighteen inches total length, which is a very fish to find, but there are plenty around.
Mackerel are still being caught around local fishing piers, trolling the beaches, and even sometimes local passes. You are still finding the schools of bait holding the mackerel around. Once the bait gets tougher which is coming soon, the mackerel will dissipate more. However, they typically will hang around the bay in areas throughout the year.
Flounder action is going well around the area too, and we are seeing some nice ones around the passes. They are some good ones caught around the flats and edges of the structures of the bay as well. They love live shrimp, mud minnows, and white bait for live baits. You can also get them while moving soft plastics super slow along the bottom too.
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Hogfish continues to be the cornerstone of our near shore fishery as we move through our ‘winter’ months in our area. These guys are biting well right now near shore in around 30-70ft but we often find them even deeper too. However, once you get deeper there are other more aggressive fish around and it gets harder and harder to get your bait down to the hogfish as they are so much less aggressive and last to bite. We target them shallower closer to shore generally for that reason.
Hogfish are sometimes softer biters while other times in the same area on the same spot even you will have other hogfish rail the baits like freight trains. Its super interesting how different their behaviors can vary. Due to this, its very important to have a very light rod and reel combo when targeting the hogfihs, but still maintaining something with a decent drag in the reel and a good backboned rod to handle the fight they put up. They are skinnier but tall fish and they use their bodies to turn sideways against you while fighting to create plenty of hydrodynamic drag while swimming hard making their fight very good compared to other fish of their size and weight. So make sure you are prepared to feel a very soft bite, but also a good fight once hooked up.
Typically we are using around 3000-5000 series spinning reel with around a 17-20lb class rod and about 25-30lb leader and 3-4ot hook and 1-2oz egg sinker. They love live shrimp, but they will take sandfleas, crabs, and even rockshrimp. We have caught them on small chunks of the threadfin sometimes, but its more rare.
Lane snapper are super common near shore too, especially as we get deeper near shore. We are catching quite a few of them on our near shore 5 hour half days and 10 hour all days. They love pretty much any baits we sink down there, especially the shrimp while targeting the hogfish. Plus, the lighter hogfish tackle is a great way to target the lane snapper too.
Mangrove snapper have been coming up often on our 10hr all day, and we see them occasionally on the 5hr too. However, they are more common as we go deeper near shore and super common while targeting the hogfish with live shrimp and lighter tackle.
Mackerel are still around near shore, while they have thinned out a bit we are still picking up a few on the troll. We are seeing them around near shore wrecks, reefs, and structures that are holding bait.
Flounder coming up occasionally too, especially when we drift off the hardest bottom or swing on the anchor off the ledge a bit. They love that sandy bottom adjacent to the hard bottom. They are biting on live shrimp primarily, but sometimes smaller pinfish will attract the big flounder too.
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Mangrove snapper have been our focus while offshore lately, but while targeting the mangroves we have been seeing plenty of other great eating fish and some pretty large too! The daytime hunts out deeper near 200ft have been producing some nice mutton snapper on live pinfish. The scamp grouper have also been coming up both at night and during the day on the dead threadfin, cut bonita and live pinfish as well. We are seeing lots of yellowtail snapper and for me I would be using a little strip of squid or cut bonita about two inches long and about a quarter inch wide. Live shrimp is also a great choice for the yellow tail and this time of year is one of those times some live shrimp on the 39 hour isn’t a bad idea because if they bite slows at all droping down to even lighter tackle like 30lb leader and a smaller 4-5ot hook and a live shrimp will often get you some quality snapper action while others maybe struggling to get some action on their setups with bigger dead baits or other larger live baits. However, this is only a last resort type of option when the bite will occasionally slow down before we move areas or move spots.
We are also seeing lots of the triggerfish lately, and typically, we are targeting them the same way as the yellowtail with that strip of bonita or squid cut the same way. While you may run into triggerfish while targeting the mangrove snapper on the cut threadfin and double snell, its more common to target them with this methodology.
