Capt Dan Medina
Member
Hey all, Im a Florida guy who has made my way up to Tenn over the years visiting friends... usually we try to avoid going this time of year as its cold! So I figured Id give ya a little taste of what we do down here in southwest Florida...
With 3 growing kids in sports, a fairly full calendar of fishing charters, dealing with hurricane Ian aftermath and house repairs, its been hard trying to get back to routines...
The good news is little by little, our city and waterways are starting to look "normal" again. More boaters are out on the water, and the fishing has been pretty good if you can get out of the way of all this wind!
Offshore, January 1st brought the reopening of red grouper. It is much welcomed, and the bite has actually been steady with some great fish thrown in. Typically this time of year, we usually would focus on the 90-100 foot ranges for our grouper... however this year it seems the larger concentration of grouper have been deeper, in the 115-130 ft range. make no mistake, you can still get nice fish shallower, but the bio-mass of fish, spots where you can pick up 4,5 even 12 keeper grouper on one spot... has been deeper.
Side note: Now keep in mind, feb and march, many of our grouper species are closed to harvest past the 20 fathom line. Make sure you dont get caught with ay past this demarcation line as it can result in heavy fines and possible forfeiture of your boat and gear... the 20 fathom line coordinates can be found with a google search... make sure to plug them into your gps as a route that way you can see the lines on your gps...
Out in this deeper water, normally we would have a nice concentration of lanes and vermilions this time of year, it seems most of the schools of lanes and verms deeper are barely legals, whereas there have been nicer snappers caught in the 50-75 ft range...
We have fished some inshore on the cat when the weathers been to sloppy to get offshore.. Seems between the hurricane and the red tide currently in our area, the fish arent in alot of their normal habitats... Areas around Captiva pass have been cloudy where they'd normally be clear and pristine. Other grass flats that would normally hold an abundance of nice trout this time of year are nearly void...
the key seems to be finding the pockets of clean, moving water and there you will find your fish.
With 3 growing kids in sports, a fairly full calendar of fishing charters, dealing with hurricane Ian aftermath and house repairs, its been hard trying to get back to routines...
The good news is little by little, our city and waterways are starting to look "normal" again. More boaters are out on the water, and the fishing has been pretty good if you can get out of the way of all this wind!
Offshore, January 1st brought the reopening of red grouper. It is much welcomed, and the bite has actually been steady with some great fish thrown in. Typically this time of year, we usually would focus on the 90-100 foot ranges for our grouper... however this year it seems the larger concentration of grouper have been deeper, in the 115-130 ft range. make no mistake, you can still get nice fish shallower, but the bio-mass of fish, spots where you can pick up 4,5 even 12 keeper grouper on one spot... has been deeper.
Side note: Now keep in mind, feb and march, many of our grouper species are closed to harvest past the 20 fathom line. Make sure you dont get caught with ay past this demarcation line as it can result in heavy fines and possible forfeiture of your boat and gear... the 20 fathom line coordinates can be found with a google search... make sure to plug them into your gps as a route that way you can see the lines on your gps...
Out in this deeper water, normally we would have a nice concentration of lanes and vermilions this time of year, it seems most of the schools of lanes and verms deeper are barely legals, whereas there have been nicer snappers caught in the 50-75 ft range...
We have fished some inshore on the cat when the weathers been to sloppy to get offshore.. Seems between the hurricane and the red tide currently in our area, the fish arent in alot of their normal habitats... Areas around Captiva pass have been cloudy where they'd normally be clear and pristine. Other grass flats that would normally hold an abundance of nice trout this time of year are nearly void...
the key seems to be finding the pockets of clean, moving water and there you will find your fish.
