Stuart Area Offshore and Inshore

The best offshore bite for us lately has been the blackfin tuna. We have been catching them on every trip to the Push Button Hill area and boating them in good numbers. The fish are not very big but they sure put up a good fight for their size. There has been plenty of bonita mixed in with them from one footers to twenty pounders and an occasional skipjack. We even hooked a sail the other day while trolling tuna feathers there. We bottom fished in seventy five feet of water off of the Loran Tower and boated some big triggers and porgy. We caught some small sea bass, vermillion, and yellowtail and released them all. Sea bass has been shut down by the SAFMC as of October 17th. Vermillion snapper will be shut down on October 31st. It does not leave much for us to pick away at. Due to a lot of runoff from heavy rains, the live bait has been hit and miss. Spanish mackerel and blue fish have been moving near the beach looking for glass minnows and finger mullet. If you are lucky enough to find greenies or sardines, kings will be close by. Look for snook and drum at the bridges and tarpon and jacks chasing the finger mullet and bunker in the rivers. As the water temps drop we are looking forward to the Spanish mackerel bite at Peck's Lake and the pompano moving into the rivers. More later.