Fishing Report – Pensacola

Inshore

If you are looking for bull redfish, the place to be seems to be along the beach between Pensacola and Perdido Pass. Those fishing Pensacola Pass at night have also been catching their share of fish. Once you have found a school feeding on the surface they will eat just about anything, but a fairly heavy bucktail jig is always a good choice.

You can pretty much bet on being able to catch some white trout around the Pensacola Bay Bridge, but the consensus has been that many of them are small. They can be caught us a variety of both natural baits and artificial lures.

Sheepshead have been another pretty consistent find for inshore anglers lately. Look for them around structure with barnacles like bridge pilings, rock jetties, or deep docks and sea walls. Fiddlers crabs have been hard to find, so most anglers have been using live shrimp.

Offshore

If you can brave the weather there’s some good action to be had in the Gulf. It’s an excellent time for a rig trip in search of tuna. From the latest reports there are quite a few yellowfins along with plenty of blackfins around the floating rigs. As usual the best bite has been very early in the mornings, just before sunrise.

Finding a good box of bottom feeders shouldn’t be too tough of a task either. Amberjack should be a very easy find on the larger wrecks and the triggerfish, vermilion snapper, and grouper reports have been pretty good as well. Live bait is very hard to find right now, so it’s a good time to give the vertical jigs a try.

Piers & Beaches

The reports have been different each day, but the cold weather will definitely keep the bonita feeding around the Pensacola Beach Gulf Fishing Pier. A white jig is the only way to go when attempting to catch bonita off the Pier.

Those fishing on Bob Sikes Bridge still are finding a fair amount of sheepshead along with some redfish, black drum, ground mullet, and white trout.

Surf fishing reports have been few and far between, but this is ordinarily a good time to fish for whiting and there’s always a good chance you hook into a bull red. Since there are very few pompano on the beach right now I would try fishing with fresh peeled shrimp.

-Capt. Chris Phiilips