Capt. Philip Watson
Well it seemed like forever but we finally made it out of year 2020. Although we went through some crazy things, it seems like it didn’t bother the fish one bit. I like to give a thankful shout out to all of our amazing clients who continue to support our family business. It truly means a lot.
January my main focus will be hogfish and sheepshead. Both of these fish go into a winter time spawn and it makes it way easier to target these fish. For hogfish my favorite days are low visibility foggy days. It seems like they get a little less leader shy and we tend to catch a lot more on days like these. Very similar to sheepshead, shrimp is how catch them. You can use little pieces, halves, or even whole shrimp, whichever you prefer. Knocker rigs will work well, along with a ton of other jig options.
Our trip of the month was with the Keen crew and boy did we crush them. The first drop was in 90’ on a big pile of Red Grouper. We caught eight fish over 24” and probably got broken off on the bottom by about that many too! It was non-stop for probably an hour. Once the bite shut off we made a short move and got our last two fish for the limit then headed shallower to do some snapper fishing.
Targeting ledges in 75’ using shrimp we caught hogfish, mangrove snapper, yellowtails, and gag grouper. Although we had a full moon and dirty water working against us, our bite didn’t reflect that. We ended the day with our limit of grouper and about 70 other snapper species.