Weather Brings Fantastic Fishing Offshore

There's fantastic fishing offshore this month.

The weather is beautiful for this time of the year and we have had some great catches on Show Me The Fish Charters operating out of the Bradenton Beach Marina and fishing out of a custom 31-foot Morgan Sport fisherman.

My parties are catching bone-bruising amberjack, red grouper, scamp, mangrove snappers, porgys, triggerfish, sea bass, Bonita [little tunnys] blacktip sharks up to 5 feet and an abundance of catch and release of gag grouper.

The best action is offshore of Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key starting out in depths of about 115 feet. Going out to the deeper ledges and wrecks — at about 150 feet — gets even wilder and crazy with larger fish.

Extra large pinfish have been working magic this week for amberjack and smaller baits for the mangrove snapper and other tasty reef fish. The red grouper are eating anything we put down. On a couple of trips I have seen red grouper come up with chicken bones that someone must have dropped overboard.

If you want to keep grouper you need to hurry up the red, scamp and black grouper go out of season Feb. 1 to March 31. The weather forecast looks perfect, the fish are biting and life is good.