Fishing Report: January 31, 2020

MADEIRA BEACH, Fla. - Every Friday morning, Captain Dylan Hubbard of Hubbard's Marina joins Good Day to fill viewers in on his fishing forecast as we head into the weekend.

Here is his fishing report for January 31, 2020

Inshore

We are starting to see the pompano show up to our area in some decent numbers. Currently, they are not super thick quite yet but in certain areas you can find good concentrations. 

They love a docks goofy jig, nekid ball jig or a small bucktail with short feathers bouncing just off the sandy bottom along our beautiful beaches, or adjacent to the channels of our outer bay areas. Right now, the hot spots seem to be around the Skyway approach, Fort De Soto and around Pass-A-Grille but a few have been caught around John’s Pass too. 

You want to use lighter tackle like 15-20lb floro leader and a lighter-braided line with lighter spinning set up -- something for great casting distance but also super sensitive. Also, keep in mind when working your artificial for these guys, you don’t really need to bounce it very far off the bottom only 4-6 inches. 

You can also use sandfleas if you would prefer live bait, and sometimes shrimp too, but the sandflea is king when it comes to pompano bait. Keep in mind, these guys like clear, nice, and calmer waters. It’s tough to get them when the water gets stirred up or if it’s turbulent due to wind or seas. 

Sheepshead are still biting well around our local piers, docks, jetties, seawalls and bridges. They are prolific through the early spring but especially behind a cold front when that water gets chilly and stirred up a bit, they seem to bite even a bit better. Due to this, we should see some great sheepshead action this weekend. 

There are some great redfish action this past week in our back bay waters. Right up against the mangrove shorelines and shallower flats seem to be working well, but the dock lines still a great spot for them too. Smaller live pinfish are great live bait options, but live shrimp will work too or even cut dead bait. If you are going artificial, the gold spoon of soft plastic paddle tail would be my suggestion this time of year. 

Snook are around this week too, not biting quite as well, but we saw some nice ones caught around the back bay and upper bay areas. They are definitely moving back in a ways due to the recent cold snaps. Remember, when using artificials to retrieve more slowly than normal when the water gets cold. 
Residential dock lines are a great area to target around the mouths of the bayous or rivers, but we are seeing them throughout the back bays too. Dock lights at night will also produce the snook if you can’t get after them during the day. Sometimes at night you can find even better action since they tend to be more concentrated around the docks holding bait and casting some warm light. 

Trout action has been great lately throughout the area -- from the beaches through the passes to the back and upper bay areas on the flats, docks, bridges, piers and more. Specifically, the silver trout seem to be the most active around the bridges, passes and on the beaches while speckled trout can be mixed in with the silvers but are primarily more of the back bay waters area right now themselves. 

Near shore

Again, this week the big story near shore is the great hogfish action we are seeing as of late near shore. Anywhere from around 40 to 70 feet of water we are seeing plenty of hogfish action on the live shrimp or even pieces of fresh dead shrimp that we take near shore when bottom fishing for these hogfish. 

Keep in mind, they are a wrasse, not a snapper. This means they tend to be up off the bottom cruising looking for prey on the bottom. We typically catch the hogfish when your bait is very close to or resting on the bottom. However, we always use lighter tackle and lighter weights so that they have a chance to bite our bait and get hooked well before you even get set up to fish for that stop. These guys are great-eating fish but challenging to catch. If you want a chance at catching one, right now seems to be the best time to get them on a nekid ball jig or jig head or even a knocker rig. 

If you’re going the knocker rig method don’t forget around 4-5 of the 8mm red beads in between you around 1oz egg sinker and that 3-4ot hook. 

While targeting the hogfish we are seeing some decent numbers of lane snapper and mangrove snapper too. While these guys are mainly a bycatch of our hogfishing endeavors they are great eating fish too if you get frustrated with the hogs.

Red grouper bite seems to be a little better than normal right now, but still nothing to write home about. They are deeper like the lanes and mangroves but hard to pass those hogfish to head out deeper for these guys. You can still get the hogfish out deeper they are just even more challenging. 

Offshore

We had some great offshore action this past weekend aboard our 39-hour long range overnight fishing trip at Hubbard’s Marina. 

The new moon was in full effect and luckily, it did not cause us to battle the current too badly even when we were fishing close to 250 foot of water during the trip. 

The mangrove snapper bite wasn’t on fire like that first 39-hour trip this year, which was on the backside of the full moon. However, we did find some nice ones around 160 to 220 feet of water on the first night of fishing with some big vermillion snapper, porgies, almaco jacks and other heads and tails mixed in. 

However, we are seeing the occasional yellowtail and even the unicorn mutton snapper here and there right now too. Plus, we had a killer bite of black fin tuna just before sunrise on the flat lines, knocker rigs and even through the morning on the trolling set ups between spots. 

Additionally, the big news this trip was the red grouper bite we had a killer day of grouper fishing bouncing around between spots hunting for some fat red grouper and, sure enough, we found the mother load. 

One area produced over two dozen fat red grouper for us and we caught some more before and after the honey hole too on the live pinfish, squid strips and even the threadfins. 

Finally, a few nice scamp groupers were hauled up too while bouncing around for red grouper during the day out deep. We have the deep water spawning closure of red grouper starting tomorrow so we will be changing up tactics during the next two months to accommodate this. 

Basically, you cannot have red grouper on your boat past the 20-fathom line or 120ft of water. What we do is simply fish for the snapper the first night past that closure line and then when the sun comes up we come inside the line to catch our red grouper and then once they are on board were limited to the shallower depths inside that line.