Hogfish Fishing Reports

Inshore trout and sheepshead around the beaches has been awesome. Offshore the hogfish bite is crazy good but about one out of ten is a keeper.

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

Winter fishing has been fun as we have bottom-fishing on most of our offshore trips. The main catch has been catch-and-release gag groupers, hogfish, mangrove snappers, lane snappers, porgies, and grunts on all of our length trips. These species make for lots of excellent white fish for our captains’ to fillet back at the dock and send home with our customers! We will continue to target these fish until the water warms up and the trolling bite gets hot! Busy spring break in Clearwater Beach is coming, time to book your March and April charters now!

e have had some cold mornings in Sarasota Florida and the water is cold! We ended the year with water temperatures in the 50's in some places. With these cold water temperatures our customers enjoyed targeting Sheepshead, Snappers and Grunts on our nearshore reefs. On our warmer days we focused on fishing the docks and rocks in areas that the water was warmer in Sarasota Bay and were able to find luck targeting Redfish and Snook! We also have found a few Pompano as well as schools of big Jack Crevalle in our back country creeks.

Inshore has been on fire with redfish bite back on track, sheepshead are showing up in strong numbers. Offshore kingfish, Spanish, hog snapper and gags are close to shore. Best time of year to fish!!

Fishing is really good right now, we're catching a lot of fish, book now!

Fishing is really good right now, we're catching a lot of fish, book now!

Fishing is really good right now, we're catching a lot of fish, book now!

Hog fishing is hot!!! If you have the patience to hunt these guys down, I will offer up the same great strategy that seems to work for me: To start off, I utilize medium lite to medium size fishing rods- and our “weapons of choice” are the green stick made by Kris green these custom fishing can be purchased at ST. Pete Fishing Outfitters. I prefer a 10-15lb rod rating, but you can go with what you will have the most confidence in. As usual, the line of choice 15lb Braid attached to a 20lb fluorocarbon leader. What I feel is the most critical component of my setup is the use a 1/4oz Mission Fishin jig-head. Now that we talked about the setup, let’s get to how to find them. I’m going to suggest you search around ledges- there’s no need to look for the wrecks. When fishing these areas and using this type of rig, you will also hook up with a fair amount of Mangrove Snapper and Key West Grunts. The water depth I am looking to fish in is 25-60ft. Save yourself some of your hard earned money: There is no need to buy the biggest shrimp at the bait shop to catch these guys. Regular or Hand Picked shrimp work just fine for this application, but make sure you bring plenty of them. As a rule of thumb, I typically make sure to bring 15 dozen shrimp for my clients when I’m running a 4 hour charter. 4thST bait and tackle and Mitch’s bait and tackle always has great looking shrimp! So when you’re out there hoggin’ try to bring a 4/0 reel lined with 80lb matched with a stout rod. You’re going to want to drop a 3-5oz sinker to bottom (depending on current) with a dead bait to the bottom. My personal favorite here is to have a butterflied Key West grunt attached to the business end. Make sure you lock the drag down and then simply set it in a rod holder. You just may happen to pull up a nice Gag Grouper ( If you put these tips to use and you’ll set yourself up for some great cold weather fishing & some of the best tasting fish you can get!! Check out our New Tv show on Waypoint.

Hog fishing is hot!!! If you have the patience to hunt these guys down, I will offer up the same great strategy that seems to work for me: To start off, I utilize medium lite to medium size fishing rods- and our “weapons of choice” are the green stick made by Kris green these custom fishing can be purchased at ST. Pete Fishing Outfitters. I prefer a 10-15lb rod rating, but you can go with what you will have the most confidence in. As usual, the line of choice 15lb Braid attached to a 20lb fluorocarbon leader. What I feel is the most critical component of my setup is the use a 1/4oz Mission Fishin jig-head. Now that we talked about the setup, let’s get to how to find them. I’m going to suggest you search around ledges- there’s no need to look for the wrecks. When fishing these areas and using this type of rig, you will also hook up with a fair amount of Mangrove Snapper and Key West Grunts. The water depth I am looking to fish in is 25-60ft. Save yourself some of your hard earned money: There is no need to buy the biggest shrimp at the bait shop to catch these guys. Regular or Hand Picked shrimp work just fine for this application, but make sure you bring plenty of them. As a rule of thumb, I typically make sure to bring 15 dozen shrimp for my clients when I’m running a 4 hour charter. 4thST bait and tackle and Mitch’s bait and tackle always has great looking shrimp! So when you’re out there hoggin’ try to bring a 4/0 reel lined with 80lb matched with a stout rod. You’re going to want to drop a 3-5oz sinker to bottom (depending on current) with a dead bait to the bottom. My personal favorite here is to have a butterflied Key West grunt attached to the business end. Make sure you lock the drag down and then simply set it in a rod holder. You just may happen to pull up a nice Gag Grouper ( If you put these tips to use and you’ll set yourself up for some great cold weather fishing & some of the best tasting fish you can get!! Check out our New Tv show on Waypoint.