The mackerel are still very prolific around our near shore waters, plus now the kingfish are being more and more cooperative around the near shore artificial reefs and bait schools moving along our beautiful beaches. This past Tuesday afternoon our afternoon half day pulled in around a 12-15lb kingfish as we approached the Johns Pass sea buoy which is only a mile from the bridge. Brian Harris, our live bait expert at Hubbard’s Marina, has been catching plenty of mackerel around the beaches and out to around 3 miles lately fishing hard bottom areas that are holding bait. Plus, this time of year the stone crab traps have been placed along our coast line. These guys are essentially a chum block marking a hard bottom area. Plus, they have a line running from the trap up to a buoy to mark the trap’s location. This line often will hold white bait from green backs to threadfins to sardines and more. Between the chum in the trap, the bait hiding around the line, and the sea life hiding under the buoy the mackerel and sometimes even the kingfish will be often found around these crab traps.

Also, crabbers will only put their crab lines along the harder bottom where the stone crabs are crawling. They even make it easy by often placing their traps in a straight line! This makes trolling adjacent to the trap line very easy and typically very productive this time of year. However, you have to be super careful not to drag any lures into the crab trap lines. This will make you lose your lure and it’s super dangerous for the crabbers trying to retrieve their traps from the bottom. Around the mackerel are the kingfish, its still a little early and we aren’t seeing them everywhere like we should be soon but we are definitely seeing more and more each week.

The mangrove snapper have been pretty cooperative this past week as well near shore in the deepest near shore waters around 80-100ft of water were seeing some fairly active mangrove snapper bites. Also, many of the fish we are landing are fairly good sized mangrove snapper for how shallow we are catching them.

Hogfish action continues to heat up each week and this week was the same. We saw some really nice hogfish on our private fishing charters and a few on our 5 hour half days and 10 hour all days additionally too. The hogfish love the live shrimp, fiddle crabs, sand fleas or rock shrimp. However, I like to primarily use shrimp because it gives you a shot at a little of everything out there near shore and you have more action and fun while out fishing. Plus, occasionally you can find some lane snapper, mangroves or sea bass while targeting the hogfish around that 30-70ft area where they primarily are found most often. You find plenty of other fish while hog fishing with shrimp too like porgies or the grey snapper (white grunts) and it makes it very active and fun while near shore fishing. Those shrimp can be a little tricky out there in the deeper waters since they come off the hook with the smallest nibble and fishing in 30-70ft with shrimp is a whole lot more challenging than fishing a dock or a flat with shrimp which is already pretty challenging when pinfish or snapper are around.

Lane snapper are very active in the deeper near shore waters around those mangrove snapper and the deepest part of the hogfish territory from around 60-100 foot is where we are seeing the lane snapper. They love the live shrimp, but they will take squid too and they are so good eating. Plus, we have been seeing those lanes more and more often as of late.