Florida Fish Report

Inshore Fishing Report

Redfish bite is HOT around the area from the bays to the beaches and all in between it’s a super hot redfish bite right now and its primetime redfish action time! If you have ever wanted to try and get one now is the time throughout the area. We are seeing them heavily around the back bay waters and mangrove shorelines. At higher tides, they back up into the mangroves or ‘get into the trees’ as they say. While at medium and lower tides they get into schools and roam the flats, edges, bars and oyster beds. We are finding them in bigger concentrations and good aggressive numbers. It’s a great time to go looking for some redfish around your local flats at mid to low water. They seem to be biting a variety of baits but definitely a crowd favorite is the soft plastic imitation shrimp or paddletails. Live bait wise we see more action on shrimp around the pass but that’s only what people are using, while I hear white bait is working best in the bays but that’s because most of the boaters are cast netting the bait. To me it seems most anything you throw will work as they are fired up!  

Snook action around the pass has slowed up a bit as we see many of the fish receding to the back bay waters as the days get shorter and we move towards the onslaught of cool and cold fronts. We are seeing less and less snook stacked up around the dock and bridge lights in the early am while prepping for our offshore and near shore adventures. The beaches are the same as its less and less common to see numbers of snook cruising the swash channels in any concentrations or consistency. However, those fish are all moving just a little ways back to the grass flats, mangrove islands, and points of canals hanging on docks as they retreat to the back bay winter spots. This is a great time to find plenty of snook actively feeding in transition but you have to hit those areas where they can stage and ambush baits with little effort and relative topography or coverage to provide them some coverage from dolphins and tidal flows.  

Sheepshead action is starting to pick up as we see numbers of mangrove snapper starting to lessen in those areas like dock lines, bridge pilings, rock piles and other hard structures. As the waters continue to cool and cold fronts stir up our inshore waters the mangrove snapper start to dissipate while the sheepshead concentrate.  

Flounder action picking up around the area especially around bridges and docks and down tide edges of flats where they can ambush passing baits that venture too close to the sandy bottom they hang on. This is typical through the fall while they fatten up for their near shore journey to spawn in the winter months.  

Pompano action still happening around our sandy passes, cuts and channels and around inshore bridges. We find them on the edges of flats too hunting live shrimp and other crustaceans.  

Triple tail action is picking up and we are starting to see some big fish caught from upper bay to the beach areas. Look for them around floating debris, buoys or channel markers as you cruise the inshore waters. Tossing them a free lined greenback or live shrimp or even overcasting and working back a soft plastic is a good method to get you a nice triple tail!  

Nearshore Fishing Report

Hogfish action is going well for us on our private fishing charters, but you can get a chance for them on the five hour half day and really target them decently from the ten hour all day too. Hogfish love themselves some live shrimp or fresh dead shrimp, but they really are leader shy and finicky. Often they are the last to bite a bait in the pecking order of fish. However, when we get em chewing often we have a chance to get a handful before having to move and start that process over again. We overcome this by sticking and moving between areas till we find the depth and area the hogfish are hanging then once we get one we stay till the bit dies down, but then we move to something else in that similar depth range and dial in the tactics on how the fish are laying on the ledge or structures.  

Lane snapper are also coming up near shore in good numbers in similar areas tto the hogfish and we are seeing them throughout the near shore waters until well offshore too. They are more of a bycatch for us while targeting lane snapper, but if your fishing a trip and not interested in playing the hogfish lottery with lots of live shrimp fishing squid will get you plentiful white grunts or grey snapper along with plentiful lane snapper too!

Offshore Fishing Report