It may take some persistence, but you should be able to bring home dinner and get a workout on the bottom of reefs, ledges, and even wrecks. The key here is to avoid the red snapper as best as possible.

Smaller baits on smaller circle hooks have produced nice mangrove and lane snapper, but you’ll usually have to weed through many red snapper. Certain spots have had hit or miss rudderfish and amberjack in the column. Vertical jigs and heavy soft plastics work well when they’re chewing. They really like to hit on the way down so don’t use too heavy of jigs if you’re marking them.

For a short time, we hit a banded rudderfish frenzy that made up for having 5.5mph of current on the deep water giant amberjack and grouper spots. I wasn’t 100% sure they were rudders not little greaters so we threw them back. Rudderfish are supposedly delicious.

The current has been absolutely insane this week out deep requiring 16 ounces of lead in only 140ft. If you have enough persistence to drop a big live bait down deep, don’t be surprised to pull up a grouper southeast of Canaveral or further south.