The hogfish bite is going very well nearshore out of Tampa right now! We are seeing lots of nice hogfish on our ten-hour all day trips and a few on our five-hour half-day trips. The bite seems best around 40-70ft of water on the live shrimp. The Nekid ball jigz we have in our shop seem to get them fired up, or the knocker rig style set up, or the jig head set up too! They love the smaller ledges, rock piles or flat hard bottom with the sea fans. However, they can be tricky because they are very leader shy and very unaggressive. Typically the last fish to bite in the area. This makes them tougher because you have to weed through the other more aggressive species before the hogfish start to fire up. Plus, often once they do start to fire up they will stop very soon after they start so you have to capitalize while you can!
The red grouper bite near shore right now is going very well, almost better than the gag grouper action to our west. Way up north we are seeing more gags than red grouper, but that is quite a run for our 10 hour trips. Our private charters are getting up there but the party boat 10hr is more hogfish focused right now with some red grouper mixed in.
We are seeing some nice mackerel nearshore from the beach out to around 60ft of water especially around areas holding bait like artificial reefs. The kingfish are finally biting pretty good this week we saw some good kingfish action mixed around the mackerel this past week as the water temps finally got right near shore to get them fired up.
