Nearshore fishing was again really good this week with lots of lane snapper caught a few mangroves, hogfish, and red grouper too. Plus, plentiful mackerel still abound near shore from the beach out to around 12-15 miles and we caught our first schoolie kingfish of the fall run this past week on the HUB 10hr all day fishing trip!
The hogfish bite continues to slowly improve more and more each week. The pace is slow, but were getting a few more here and there each week. This past week the best hogfish trips were the HUB private fishing charters landing 10-15 hogfish with around half of them or more being keeper sized fish. One hogfish this past week was in the 5-7lb range which is a monster for the near shore waters. As the water continues to cool off these guys will become more aggressive and easier to catch on hook and line. Plus, we typically find a more consistent keeper sized fish the cooler the water gets to be. Our half day fishing trips and the 10 hour all day trips are catching some hogfish too! The half day yesterday boated 15 hogfish and 5 of those were decent sized keeper hogfish. The trick to the hogfish is definitely live shrimp, light tackle and the most natural presentation possible which means the lightest possible weight. You want to target hard bottom areas like small ledges, rock piles or flat hard bottom with sea fans. They love to hang around seafans and they will feel more at home and aggressive in these areas. When targeting the hogfish the best depths are from 30ft up to around 70ft to catch them consistently. We are finding them most right now around 30-50ft of water.
The lane snapper are biting well this week too around 60-90ft of water we are catching lane snapper on live shrimp or small pieces of squid. Like the hogfish the best way to target lane snapper are with the lighter tackle like 4000-5000 series spinning reels with around 30lb floro leader and 4ot hooks. They are much more aggressive compared to the hogfish and much easier to catch around the ledges and rock piles near shore.
Tons of mackerel still around the area and were catching lots of them on the trolling spoons behind the planners. Plus, were catching quite a few larger ones on the flat lines while bottom fishing. Plus, we caught our first kingfish of the fall run this past week aboard the HUB 10hr all day using a flat lined threadfin on a stinger rig. We are expecting those mackerel to stay abundant and aggressive for a long while and more and more kingfish to show up slowly. Especially on the backside of this weekend’s cold front next week should bring us some more kingfish!
