The Tampa Bay Times
The bottom temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico has hovered around 72 degrees for many, many weeks. Don’t get us spearfishermen wrong, we love when the water is in the low 70’s, because the fish like that temperature too. Many fish are lively and easy to catch and spear during these conditions. Lane snappers are all over the wrecks and structure in 50 to 90 feet of water and it’s easy for a diver or handy fishermen to score their daily bag limit of these tasty snappers. Amberjack season opened at the beginning of the month and keeper size amberjack are being speared, but those fish are farther than 25 miles from shore. Most of these fish just met the 34” minimum size. The Florida Middle Grounds produced some nice size Amberjacks this past week. Some of these speared fish were in the 40 to 50 pound range. Out in water deeper than 180 feet and on steel wrecks, a few amberjacks exceeding 80 pounds were wrestled to the boat. Some nice hogfish were also speared in the M. Grounds. There were plenty of hogfish up to 10 pounds on the ledges. The visibility in the Grounds was OK, at about 20 to 30 feet. The viz was much worse in shallow waters. It was only 10 to 15 feet in water depths of 50 feet. Keep a good eye on your surroundings in this limited viz, as there are plenty of feisty sharks hunting for fish too!
- Jay Mastry - March 26, 2024
- Captains Corner, Gorta - March 23, 2024
- Dave Zalewski - March 12, 2024
