The Daily Catch | March 9, 2023

The Spanish mackerel are back! Spanish mackerel fishing has picked up near shore. We have started trolling on our 4- and 5-hour trips, extending the fishing time by dropping the lines sometimes right out of the pass, and giving guests the choice to change up the fishing experience.  We have even seen the kingfish showing up this week.  So, for those lucky anglers ready for a good fight, keep a good eye on that line! If we are fishing on the ledges and wrecks on the shorter trips, we are targeting porgies and grunts, to make sure we have a pile of good eating white fish for those fish tacos everyone is so fond of (including us!).

As we get a little deeper, we are seeing lane and vermilion snapper when we get into depths around 50-60 feet and more, they are sought after for their taste, and are commonly concentrated in the deeper half of the near shore waters during all-day fishing trips.

Mangrove snappers pick up offshore on the longer trips, and can weigh up to five pounds or so, which is considered a large size for these fish in this area. We are catching keeper red grouper in the deeper waters, closer to depths of 100 feet. Red groupers tend to bite on squid and live pinfish.

We’ve seen hogfish, bonita, black sea bass, smaller gag grouper and red snapper this past week too. There are a lot of species of fish caught off the white sandy beaches of Clearwater Beach!