Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
July 24, 2003
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Expect the Unexpected.

I had a few nice surprises and one shocking let down. The first surprise was the comback of the tarpon fishing this late in Pine Island Sound and Marco Island. We are catching between 3 and 10 tarpon per day in Pine Island Sound. Most of the fish are less than 100 pounds but your not going to hear me complain. They are hitting pinfish and threads. Smaller tarpon are also long the beaches south of naples.

Last week I fished the First Annual "Backcountry Classic" fishing tournament out of Naples. This was a high stakes tournament against the best anglers in the area. We had week tides last weekend which can make for tough fishing. We had to catch 2 snook, 2 redfish and 2 trout. The most inches wins. I prefished with my partner Capt. Bo Johnson on Friday and we caught plenty of large snook and a few trout but no reds. I was not surprised because the snook are so thick this time of year and with the low water the redfishing was going to be the toughest. We talked our strategy over the night before and decided to go for the redfish first while we stil had a little water on the flats. It paid off big, because we caught our limit of redfish by 8:00 am. We had a 25 1/2 and 23 1/2 inchers. That left 7 hours of fishing for the snook and trout. Here is where the surprise comes in. We struggled through the next 4 hours with even a strike from a snook. We could see them but they wouldn't hit. We tried plastics, live sardines and thread herring. We finally gave up and went and caught are limit of trout from the first spot we tried. Now we have our redfish and a 19 and an 18 inch trout. We have two hours to catch two snook. No problem right! Well, to make a long story short we ended up with a limit of fish but our snook were very small. 17 and 20 inches. That was good enough for 7th place overall out of 40 teams. All was not lost however. We ended up placing 2nd in the Redfish Bonanza which won us $1500. Not bad, we got to compete against some of the best in the area and we got paid for it!

The fishing forecast for the next few weeks is very good. We will have strong tides this week which will make the snook turn on. Tarpon are moving around and if you cover enough water you will find them. Look for glass minnow schools and diving birds.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

Blackwater Charters

941-575-2389

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