Destin Fishing Report 4-21-25
Does everyone get tired of me complaining about the weather forecast? While we had some awesome days, Friday was much worse than predicted and Saturday was much better than predicted. it's back to the old get up and drive to the pass before you can truly know if you need to fish or not!
The Destin High School Fishing Class will be having their annual fundraiser to build more reefs Saturday, April 26th here at the shop. They will have a garage sale and flea market set up, they will be selling memorial reefs, taking donations, and will have some raffle items. Please come by and support them. Alex Fogg and the county match them dollar for dollar to build reefs, their goal is to raise $10,000 dollars and the county matches $10,000 which allows them to build 20 reefs just for you to fish. If you have any old tackle to donate to their garage sale, please drop off at Half Hitch Destin before saturday.
Tuesday May 6th is our Snapper fishing Seminar at Legendary Marine at 6pm, this is free to attend and there will be free pizza and drinks. We will cover both red snapper and black snapper fishing. We will talk about chumming the black snapper and May is an excellent time for those. We will also cover deep water snapper using electrics and all the proper tackle for that. Lastly, we will help you with your sonar and how to locate the snapper!
Pier Fishing
They had several days the kings were on fire at the pier eating lures and cigar minnows, pompano were good pretty much every day, and good numbers on the spanish!
Most days were sunny, windy, had clear water, and rough seas which are perfect conditions for pier fishing. There were a couple cobia landed at the pier and one cobia landed at the Destin bridge. Over at the Navarre pier and Panama City pier the fishing was much the same but they both had a couple good days on mahi!
Nearshore Trolling
We had a few of the best days in over a year trolling for king mackerel, both live baits and lures were working well.
Spanish are thick around the pass and along the sand bar. Troll Clarkspoons, mackerel trees, and Clark spreaders.
Mahi have started to show up in better numbers, troll the tide line and any floating debri.
There were a few cobia caught between Fort Walton and Navarre Pier.
Bottom Fishing
Vermillion snapper were straight on fire, bull mingo were biting in the 320-550ft depths on natural bottom reefs.
Black snapper have shown up in state waters for the guys chumming, at our May seminar at legendary we will cover the techniques to catch these guys.
Across the docks I saw some good triggerfish action, several nice red groupers, quite a few scamps, I think most of those came from the area around the steps and apls. Lastly there were a few warshaw as well.
Offshore Trolling
There was a finger of blue water that pushed into fads 5 and 6, conditions were rough several of the days and limited many anglers for getting there but those that did found a few wahoo, small blackfin tuna, and a few mahi.
Bay Fishing
The story of the day has been the spanish mackerel bite. The harbor, crab island channel, coast guard station, and the pass were all good. Troll spoons, mackerel trees, Got-chas, don't forget a few trolling leads 2-4oz and a #1 or #2 planer for extra action.
Reds and sheepshead are biting at the bridge, jetty, and coast guard station.
The pompano bite at the finger jetty was hot early in the week with the full moon but that is waning now we are past the moon phase. Look for that bite to be good again on the new moon and then hot on the full moon in May!
Deep Water Bottom Fishing
Along the pipeline there was some good action on snowy grouper and yellow edge grouper, the steps and the alps are holding nice sized scamp.
The best option for these is a electric reel setup as you fishing depths of 350-900ft and hand cranking in those depths is very tiring!
