Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
October 12, 2004
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Fall Migration

The fall bait migration is underway in Southwest Florida and the preditors are not far behind. I have been spitting my time between the upper 10,000 Islands and Pine Island Sound. Charlotte Harbor is still very fresh from the runnoff of three Hurricanes that hit us this season. Overall, the fishing has been solid. There are plenty of slot redfish in the sound and Marco Island snook fishing is almost as good as it gets. There are a few scattered tarpon just about everywhere you go but nothing to make me spend much time on. Sheephead are becoming more abundant along the hard bottom near shore and in the passes. Mackerel, bluefish, jacks and sharks are scattered offshore as well.

Snook: Snook fishing this week out of Marco Island was on the verge of awesome. I spent a total of about 8 hrs in three days targeting them and our totals were pretty impressive. I believe that we landed around 70 snook. Out of those, 10 were over 30 inches. Snook in the 10,000 Island usually go crazy over lively scaled sardines and that was the key to catching these fish. The fish fed well on both the rising and falling tide.

Redfish: There have been a few redfish catches mixed in with the snook around Marco but most of the redfish that we have been catching have been in Pine Island Sound. Double digit days on slot size reds are not uncommon when the water is high. During low tide stages fishing has been tough. Again, live sardines have been hard to beat and cut bait has been good also. A well presented soft jerk bait will catch a few as well. Usually this time of year we look for the schools of big bull redfish along the outside of the bars during low tide. This year there seems to be a fewer number of these bulls and that's why low tide fihsing has been difficult. I believe that the runnoff from Hurricane Charley moved them offshore or farther down the coast. The week before the storm and a few days after there were plenty of big reds around. But now they seem to have vanished inshore.

Tarpon: I have not found targetable numbers of tarpon in the past few weeks but they just keep seeming to bump into our hooks. Last week we landed 3 of 7 hooked. All were in the upper 10,000 Islands and we were targeting snook. These tarpon ranged from 7-50 pounds and all hit live sardines. There are large tarpon around, however. I spotted a few tarpon following bait schools off the beach in Boca Grande and in the south end of Pine Island Sound. The canals and passes around Marco have been holding lots of mullet schools and some big tarpon are feeding on them also.

Mackerel, bluefish, sharks: All of these species are migrating south at the moment. We took a break from the slow fishing during low tide one day this week and ran offshore and caught all the bluefish that we wanted. Then we cut a few up into steaks and pulled on all the large spinner sharks that we wanted. The blues were on the small side but the sharks weren't. The spinners ranged from 4 feet to almost 7 feet. Falling tide outside the passes were when we found the most action. This kind of fishing is about as easy as it gets. Pick a pass, run out of the pass until you see birds working and start fishing. The bules will hit anything small and shiny and the sharks will hit the blues.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

Blackwater Charters

941-575-2389

9410628-4247 cell

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