Kingfish and mackerel still super prolific from the beaches all the way throughout the nearshore and offshore waters. However, nearshore, the beset action seems to be between 30-60ft of water areas from 3-10 miles from shore following the large bait schools that can be found by spotting the flocks of birds feeding on the bait that ‘shower’ on the surface when being chased by predators below the surface. Trolling through these bait schools will produce tons of mackerel and some decent kings too. However, the trick is to do a figure 8 pattern dragging your spoons through the school but NEVER your boat through the action. Your boat will spook the fish and the bait and make them swim down and spread out, if your boat stays off the school and just your lures go through the edges of the action that is your best bet to pick off lots of those fun to catch mackerel and kingfish.

We love the Rapala Xrap magnum 20, 30 or 40 lures to troll near shore along with a few planner and spoons combos. The trick when trolling is to create a ‘spread’ that attracts the fish to bite your lures. This technique means you want to keep the lures looking like a school of fish or bait following your boat, meaning you want to keep them in a pattern as close as you can while not getting them tangled. That’s why it’s helpful to have some planners and spoons mixed with the Rapalas, the deeper diving planner can be placed right next to a shallower diving Rapala and from the bottom it looks like two fish following close to each other and you keep building your ‘school of bait’ or spread like this and make sure once you have the lines out you don’t do any narrow turns, as long as you’re doing very wide angle turns and your spread is properly spaced you will never get tangles in your lures.

The hogfish bite has been a little more hit and miss lately and they are very leader shy right now due to the ridiculously clear water clarity we have right now near shore. When targeting the hogs as of late the 20-30lb floro has been important with around 4ot hooks in 30-50ft of water using fiddler crabs or live shrimp and the 20lb has been the most productive but it’s hard to get them up off the bottom with that lighter tackle sometimes. The other snapper species like the lanes and mangroves have been a little more slow lately but we are still catching them from time to time!