We had some great offshore action this past weekend aboard our 39 hour long range overnight fishing trip at Hubbard’s Marina. The new moon was in full effect and luckily it didn’t cause us to battle the current too badly even when we were fishing close to 250 foot of water during the trip.

The mangrove snapper bite wasn’t on fire like that first January 39 hour was on the backside of the full moon but we did find some nice ones around 160-220ft of water on the first night of fishing with some big vermillion snapper, porgies, almaco jacks and other heads and tails mixed in. However, we are seeing the occasional yellowtail and even the unicorn mutton snapper here and there right now too! Plus, we had a killer bite of black fin tuna just before sunrise on the flat lines, knocker rigs and even through the morning on the trolling set ups between spots.

Additionally, the big news this trip was the red grouper bite we had a killer day of grouper fishing bouncing around between spots hunting for some fat red grouper and sure enough we found the mother load. One area produced over two dozen fat red grouper for us and we caught some more before and after the honey hole too on the live pinfish, squid strips and even the threadfins. Finally, a few nice scamp groupers were hauled up too while bouncing around for red grouper during the day out deep. We have the deep water spawning closure of red grouper starting tomorrow so we will be changing up tactics during the next two months to accommodate this. Basically, you cannot have red grouper on your boat past the 20 fathom line or 120ft of water. What we do is simply fish for the snapper the first night past that closure line and then when the suns comes up we come inside the line to catch our red grouper and then once they are on board were limited to the shallower depths inside that line.