With popular fish out of season, Tampa Bay angler gets creative to bring home dinner
With popular Gulf of Mexico species red snapper, red grouper and gag grouper currently closed for harvest, venturing offshore to bring home dinner may seem a bit wasteful with offshore costs being high between bait, gas and tackle. But it can still be fun and fruitful.
With calm weather, I made plans with angler Geoff Szymanski and his friend Jeremy Lewis to show them and target something different. Szymanski, like many other west coast anglers, has the ability to head west when the weather allows aboard his bay boat. When Monday’s conditions looked good, I gave them a plan: hogfish and yellowtails.
August isn’t really known for targeting hogfish. Shrimp run small at bait shops and water temps have been in the low 90s offshore. We typically do this fishing in winter months when they are schooling in shallower water.
But I felt my plan was good. Fish bigger structures out from 80 to 110 feet where bycatch is going to be mangrove or yellowtail snapper, porgies and perhaps other tasty finds. I felt confident we’d get into yellowtail, as they’ve been consistent on most bigger bottoms.
On the first spot of the day, a big ledge in 80 feet of water, I rigged a 1/8-ounce Hogball and half a shrimp to a 20-pound leader. It slowly went down through the water column and about 20-feet off the bottom my line began peeling off the small spinning reel. I flipped the bail and it ran a small bit of drag.
Up came the first target species, a nice yellowtail snapper, and I felt a good day ahead.
After another yellowtail for myself, Szymanski landed his own. Lewis kept his focus on the bottom, where hogfish sift through the sand for their crustacean meals. His bait was eaten and a fish fought, getting caught up in the structure. Instead of breaking the line, I told him to let it go slack for a few minutes.
He rigged another rod for snapper and made a drop before going back to it and the fish had swam out of the ledge. Lewis worked it up and the red hues of a hogfish came to the surface and swung into the boat. It was his first and his excitement showed.
The rest of the day we spent bouncing around deeper and moving often to get a breeze and cool down, picking up a few yellowtails on nearly every spot we fished. As the current picked up we went to heavier jigs and almost all yellowtails were caught in the water column around 20 feet off the bottom. They ranged in size from just under the size limit minimum of 12 inches to around 20 inches. When we had 30 for our limit, we headed home as an offshore storm had us concerned with thunder booming over the calm Gulf.
A nice bonus was a school of porgies we came across in 100 feet of water, with all the big ones hitting the deck. Between them, a hogfish and the yellowtails we acquired plenty of delicious meat for the table, something most August offshore anglers are concerned about.
Don’t hesitate to head offshore with light tackle and have fun pulling on some different species than normal.