Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
February 14, 2001
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

On Again!.......Off Again.

I’ve had all kinds of stuff going on since my report last week. I fished both sides of the state this week and scored well each time but not good enough to call the fishing excellent. The fishing is starting to show signs of life, but I would call it inconsistent at best. Bait has been hit and miss all week. One day I’ll find it everywhere and the next it will be gone for no apparent reason. The snook have been doing the same thing. I also have been spotting scattered tarpon south of Marco Island.

Jacks from 5-10 pounds have been the only consistent catches this week. We caught them everywhere. They took buck-tail jigs in the rivers leading to the backbays, sardines on the flats south of Cape Romano and sardines off the beaches. Flies caught their share also. Any yellow or chartreuse deceiver or clouser pattern will work.

Snook fishing was excellent early in the week with most of the fish that we caught over the 26-inch minimum size. The larger snook have been feeding behind the outer islands on a rising tide. Live sardines have been the keys to catching them. Small snook to about 25-inches were taking our yellow buck-tail jigs in the rivers leading to some of the larger backbays. Like I mentioned earlier the fishing has been on and off. The snook seem to be on the move, showing up one day and not the next. The water temperatures are rising quickly and I believe the snook are moving toward the outer islands.

Trout are scattered around from Cape Romano south to Round Key. They haven’t been in bunches but if you put in the time then you can come up with a limit or two. We caught at least one trout over the 20-inch maximum limit each day last week. Most of the “gator” trout hit live sardines while we were snook fishing.

Snapper are also hitting the buck-tail jigs tipped with shrimp. The deeper runs around Goodland on Marco Island have produced the most keepers. Fly-fishing has been doing pretty good also.

Other species of notable value that we encountered this week was cobia and tarpon. Customer John Johnson hooked an estimated 110-pound tarpon on a yellow bucktail jig at the mouth of the Blackwater River. He fought the fish for 1 hour and 52 minutes before the 6-pound test line finally gave way. The day before we spotted a 20-30 pound cobia cruising the flats just off of Dismal Key Pass. We were about to leave and couldn’t get a bait rigged in time to get a cast toward him. Pompano are starting to show up in our area. The run hasn’t hit full swing by any means but a few fish are being caught. I haven’t tried them out yet, but I’ll probably give them a shot this week.

Last Friday night I was going through “tarpon withdrawals” so I met Fred Lieb at his house and we drove over to the Palm Beach inlet on the East Coast of Florida. We picked some live hand picked shrimp from Lott Bros. Tackle and headed for the power plant outflow. We landed two out of three tarpon 15-20 pounds and 3 jacks about 12-pounds. They weren’t the size tarpon that I am used to but we did succeed in our goal to score on Palm Beach inlet winter tarpon.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

Blackwater Charters

863-946-9171

www.blackwatercharters.com [email protected]

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