Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
July 19, 2002
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

The "Blackwater" Tarpon Return!

I have spent the past two weeks fishing the brackish waters of Charlotte Harbor chasing my favorite fish the blackwater tarpon. We have hooking at least one tarpon over 100-pounds almost every day for the past two weeks. The few days that we didn't catch one was due to the fact that the catfish were bad a couple of days and they wouldn't leave the baits alone long enough for a tarpon to find it. Thread herring have been the best producers with pinfish a good second choice. Look for rolling fish but we have hit a few fishing blind so fishing any of the deep holes can be productive. The fishing should be excellent through the end of next month and then most of my tarpon fishing will be focused on the 10,000 Islands.

Redfish have also been starting to make a decent run in Charlotte Harbor. Shiners fished on the Burnt Store bar have been producing limits of redfish and Capt. Bo Johnson reported catch scattered redfish along the West Wall on pinfish.

Snook fishing in the passes is still good but seems to be waning some. We caught mostly small sublegal snook this week using pinfish in the main passes of Pine Island Sound. Capt. Bo Johnson reported much of the same with the exception of some large snook up to 20-pounds on Thursday.

I will be fishing a couple of days out of of Marco Island next week and will hopefully report on what's going on up there in about seven days or so. I'm not as busy this time of year so the reports will be much more frequent.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

Blackwater Charters

941-628-4247 cell

863-946-9171 home

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