By Capt. Philip Watson
The winter season is setting in and the shallow reefs are alive! I favor ledges in the 45’-70’ range with an area of hard bottom around them. Gags and hogfish are the fish of the month for me. With fish in close, short runs usually offer full coolers of mangrove snapper, Key West grunts, red and gag grouper, hogfish and porgys.
For this month, the featured trip was with Isaac and Elliot Ullmann. We set out on a Hogfish Hunt and ended up with a couple of nice ones! We headed offshore out of Anna Maria Island and started fishing in 50’ of water. The fishing started slow, but we got them going. Everybody caught at least one hogfish with a couple other snapper and food fish mixed in. To hook and line hogfish I like to scale down to 30lb fluorocarbon leader, while using a knocker rig or Captain Chappy’s Hogballs. He makes a variety of colors and weights for you to choose from. Make sure you stock up on shrimp because all you need to do is bait them with small pieces. I typically make sure that I have at least 10 dozen shrimp when leaving the dock on my six-hour trips. It feels weird to use so little bait while hogfishing, but in this case you must remember that elephants eat peanuts. Another key piece of advice is to not give up on a spot too quickly. Make sure to get the bite going before you move on; most of my hogfish are all caught within a few minutes of each other.
Also, while on the Hogfish grounds you will have a good opportunity to do some grouper digging. I find that while fishing the shallow stuff, the gags will kind of hang back and watch the show for a while. Once your chum slick is going drop down a pinfish. I prefer to freeline them back, so beef up your fluorocarbon to 60 to 80lb. Make sure to turn those fish, nothing will shut down a bite quicker than an angry gag grunting in his ledge after he breaks you off!
Contact Captain Philip Watson (941) 226 1100
