Captain’s Corner for March 13 Dave Zalewski 397-8815

What’s Hot or Not: Trolling for Spanish mackerel for the past 10 days has been either as good as it get or a waste of time. When they are here non stop action has been had trolling #1 planers, 30 feet of mono leader , and a #0 or #1 gold spoon at 6 knots in the vicinity of any marker between Egmont key and numbers 5 and 6. Once the fish and located and several were in the box, we have switched to 12 pound spinning tackle and cast small lures resembling sardines from a drifting boat. With a slow drift, cutting sardines into small pieces and chumming with them has kept the fish within casting distance. It appears that these schools of mackerel are in a migratory mode. They may be present for one or two days and disappoint us for a few days trying to catch them in the same area.
March 17 (St Patrick’s Day) is when the first group of kingfish traditionally show up and this year should be no exception because of the appearance of schools of baitfish and an abundance of blue runners on the artificial reefs and channel markers. The se fish will be scattered and the use of hardware as opposed to live bait trolling will allow you to cover more territory in locating the concentrations of fish.
Hot: Trolling for gag grouper on hard bottom areas that are interspersed with ledges in 25 to 35 feet of water. In the past most grouper trolling activity has been concentrated along the edge shipping channel east of the Skyway . These same depths offshore in the gulf do not experience the pressure and have been producing great catch, photo, and release action because of the closure on gags which is in effect until July.