Port Canaveral, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, and Orlando
I for one am happy to see 2022 behind us. The last 3 months was brutal with very few good fishing days. New year new start and we are off to a really good start.

The King is happy and in Canaveral we live & die by the king. Live bait trolling will be fast pace action with 8 to 30lb kings. We will have a good handful of sailfish in the mix and keeper cobias will be caught off the sand bar sharks and bull sharks that come up to eat your kings (remember that cobia are now 36 to the for and 1 per person or 2 per boat, whatever is less)

Live bait options. If you don’t easily find the pogies on the beach, just head off shore with a #8 sabiki ready. Watch the sky and your bottom finder. Somewhere between 40 & 70 feet there will be thread fins loaded and the frigates, gulls and pelicans will give away their location. The little marks will be horn belly’s and those are almost worthless. The marks that dang near black out the screen will be your thread fins and that’s what you want.

One of my absolute favorite styles of fishing is to fish for stringer fish such as lane snapper, triggerfish, vermillion snapper and porgies. This is known as chicken rig fishing. I suggest using very small pieces of squid and cut bait to help aboard the red snapper but chicken rig fishing is just a numbers game. The more times you drop, the more times you get tasty treats you can keep but you will for sure weed through your fair share of grunts and other undesirables. I do have to chuckle a little when I see ppl toss back grunts but the same people will go out and fish all day for 20 head of crappie 🤷🏼‍♂️.

Our golden tile fish open with the new year. If you want to solely fish for groceries then deep dropping can be a great option. I personally think a lot of people over think tile fishing out of Canaveral. Run to 500ft set drifts stemming the current and make jumps deeper until you get bites. If you do this a half dozen times and don’t get bites, then it’s just not going to happen so switch gears and run back to hard bottom to save your day. Solid catches of golden tiles, blue line tiles and a few yellow edge and your 1 snowy should be common this month.

January is a great month for sword fishing. A lot of talent goes into rigging baits and properly setting up your gear. A big investment in equipment also. I don’t want anyone to think I am downplaying the talent that goes into this fishery but it has a lot to do with putting in the time. Long Line boats are proof a lot of it is about the time. Slap a squid on a big circle hook, add a glow stick and let it soak. No one talks about when they don’t catch them, only when they do.

I am looking forward to a phenomenal year of fishing. Give us a shout to get ahead of the crowd. This year we are offering a limited number of Tuna Trips for April, May & June.

The Suzuki Repower Fishing Report is sponsored by Mastry Suzuki Repower

Captain Greg Rapp
Sealeveler Sport Fishing Charters
Phone: (321) 794-3474
Capt. Greg on the web: https://www.sealeveler.com/
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About Captain Greg’s Reports and Forecast
Captain Greg has been fishing the waters of Port Canaveral and the Atlantic for over 30 years. He has the largest and most highly rated private charter business in Port Canaveral, Sea Leveler Sport Fishing Charters. Greg and his team of full time captains fish well over 200 days each per year. We have kept detailed catch history for every trip ran since 2010. You can access this history at www.sealeveler.com/reports. His engineer wife, Amber, has analyzed the catch history along with other historical data such as water temperature and weather patterns. Greg uses his fishing experience and knowledge along with his wife’s statistical analysis to bring you the best fishing report available for Port Canaveral. Greg will give you the honest truth on how the fishing has been along with his best prediction of what to expect by using all of this information.