Luckily the mangrove snapper bite was off the chain this past weekend for us around 120ft of water. We saw some big mangroves through the night biting well and even in the daytime we still picked em fairly consistently. The largest mangrove we caught was around the 9lb range which is quite a monster mangrove snapper. They loved lighter tackle since the water clarity is so great right now, they definitely were preferring the 30-40lb leaders and the double snelled 5-6ot hooks and chunk of the threadfin plug. While targeting the mangroves like this we also caught plenty of large vermillion snapper, some big porgies, a few almaco jacks, and even some of the grouper too like the red grouper, scamp grouper, and those yummy strawberry groupers. We even had a 2.76lb red hind or strawberry grouper. This doesn’t sound like a monster but when most are 8-14 inches a nearly 22inch nearly 3lb one is a gigantic fish!
The pelagic action was going well during this recent 39 hour trip too we saw some monster kingfish, some nice blackfin tuna and we even had around a 80lb wahoo swim up to our boat and do some circles. Unfortunately, that wahoo wasn’t ready to eat anything. We threw lures, live baits, dead baits and everything but the kitchen sink at him but nothing was enticing him to chew. Still a great sight and a good sign of what is to come when we re-open to go out deep sea fishing once again April 7th.
