port canaveral fishing report

Last month, we saw some decent fishing with a strong finish to cobia season and also a handful of sporadic, but fantastic, mahi days. The king mackerel showed up and just like always when they do, everything else is also good. Nearshore action was also great, with pompano, black drum, snook, flounder and even a few kings and tarpon already showing along the beach.

port canaveral offshore and nearshore fishing report

NEARSHORE

Everything looks to be setting up for a great month of fishing ahead: good temperature, water clarity, and abundant bait. Right now expect to find some nice king fish and a few cobia in about 30 to 40 ft on the color change. Once you see the color change ride South until you start marking scattered bait (you are not looking for huge bait marks like pogy pods, you are looking for the scattered greenie & threadfin marks).

Any day now the pony’s will be showing, which will make nearshore fishing easy, inexpensive and productive. King mackerel, tarpon, cobia, jack crevalle, sharks, barracuda, red drum and snook will all be on the hit list when the perfect fish-catching cocktail of clean water and bait fish arrive tight to the beach. We don’t receive very many request to tarpon fish so our daily fishing reports never show us catching many. Just a heads up for those who are really into it, everything I am seeing is showing the real possibility of early tarpon.

OFFSHORE

May is the month that everything comes together offshore the Space Coast. We have great potential for everything this month, so this report may…… get a little long ???? pun intended. The ocean starts to consistently be calmer and we have a lot of different species to target and keep. We also don’t have to worry as much about giant swells messing up water clarity, or crazy water temperature changes that can happen in the winter or thermo-cline in the summer.

Groupers opened up this month, creating a lot of excitement for those who like to bottom fish. May is generally not the best grouper fishing month, but ranks highly among those in which we can keep them. The trick to a successful grouper trip is pretty simple: big baits and avoiding red snapper the best you can. This usually means fishing deep. Current will play a big factor the deeper you go, but don’t think all current is bad. A little current actually helps you stay in line on the drift, covering more productive bottom and helps you get the grouper turned. This just takes a lot of practice on the captain’s part to set the boat over the fish at the same time the lines get into the strike zone. It takes some practice on the anglers part to know how to present the bait and get everything down in a timely manner to hit the strike zone. This is why you consistently see the same boats and crews with great catches. If either the captain or angler do not know what they are doing, then grouper fishing is very tough. Also, you have to be realistic in this day and age of snappers and sharks. A great day of grouper fishing is ten grouper bites. Out of those ten bites, you’re doing well if you get five turned, which is a good average. Out of those five you got turned, if you get three of them up past the sharks you are doing good. Three groupers at the end of the day is a phenomenal day of grouper fishing.

May is also great for mahi. A lot of people like to say the mahi are running or the mahi run is on. Out of Canaveral, it doesn’t quite work like that. It would be much more realistic to say this is the time of year we might get a mahi wave. Mahi fishing is day-to-day and has everything to do with the intensity or how defined the current edge is on this side of the gulf stream. Yes we have real time temperature charts that give you an idea, but as far as I know we don’t have accurate current speed. Current does you no good when mahi fishing if it is a gradual change. You need no current to a rage and when that happens you will have caught a good mahi wave. The only way to know is to go, and this is why you see reports of great mahi catches one day and none the next day. Yes if you spend a entire day trolling and picking weeds you will probably luck into a mahi or two but most of us would rather put the flare gun to our temple than do that all day.

The best thing about May is the variety that can be found on the 60 to 100ft reefs slow trolling or live bait trolling. Yes, the broken record that is me is back. We have a little saying that we joke about amongst the Sea Leveler Captains, “If you go past 100ft, you lose.”

Live bait trolling is hands down the most productive fishing you can do. A lot of people call this king fishing. I am not really sure why because it should be called everything-that-swims fishing. I can guarantee we will catch king mackerel, cobia, mahi, sailfish, red snapper, sharks, barracuda, bonito, jack crevalle, trigger fish, mutton snapper, black fin tuna and wahoo all by slow trolling this month. Yes the kings are dominant but man is it fun to pull on fish all day long!

May is going to be awesome and I hope this report gives everyone a better understanding on how fishing really plays out in our area. We look forward to some fantastic catches this month!