Outdoors

Daily fishing report

By BILL HARDMAN
Published May 6, 2006

Gulf water visibility remains good at most depths. The algae commonly known as "angel hair" is still covering a lot of the shallow ledges and wrecks. The grouper and snapper will hold up in the algae for a short time, then as the smaller fish and bait move to cleaner bottom structure the grouper and snapper follow.

An old fisherman's trick is to set up your bottom machine to be sensitive to structure so that you can pick up the "fuzzy" readings of the algae on the bottom. Of course, it helps to be a diver so you can verify your machine's readings. Once you know how to find the algae, head west until it disappears, and fish or dive the first hard bottom or structure you find. Concentrations of fish tend to stay just west of the bottom algae.

Grouper have been scattered in most depths. This week many of our divers headed to deeper than 100 feet in search of gag grouper, and they were disappointed to find that they burned fuel to find the same grouper concentrations in 60 feet.

The hogfish are moving back to the shallow depths. However, the hogfish are still on the small side. The Florida Middle Grounds are producing good numbers of larger hogfish, but the big male "brown snouters" aren't as plentiful yet.

Bill Hardman teaches scuba, spearfishing and free diving through Aquatic Obsessions Scuba in St. Petersburg. Call (727) 344-3483.

[Last modified May 6, 2006, 02:15:18]