Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
July 7, 2000
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Bruiser Jacks take up the slack left from weaker tarpon fishing.

I’m back from my honeymoon and in the full swing of fishing. I started fishing the day after I got back on the 28th of June and have been fishing almost every day since. I’m still splitting time between Marco Island, Punta Gorda, and Jupiter. The majority has been out of Marco however. All of the trips have been productive with the exception of a trip I ran out of Punta Gorda in search of tarpon. We did manage to hook some cobia but failed to get any of them to the boat. But other than that one trip the rest have had some exciting catches.

Large Jacks have been blasting live bait on our trips out of Marco Island. The past two trips have produced at least 10-15 large jacks in the 12-pound range with a couple fish pushing 18 pounds. That’s not to mention the fish that kicked our butts on the structure. Believe me it was more times than I could count. There will be jacks from 5-15 pounds around any of the area passes and in the cuts around Cape Romano. These fish are mainly a sportfish and aren’t very good to eat so please practice catch and release.

The tarpon scene has cooled off for me since I have returned from my two-week honeymoon. I ran a full-day trip up Charlotte Harbor this week but we couldn’t get anything going so we abandoned the hunt and went to the flats where we caught a few trout and hooked some cobia around the 41 bridge. I have heard since that the tarpon are farther toward Boca Grande Pass and I would assume that they would be heading to the Peace River in the weeks to come. Yesterday, I located some small 20-30 pound tarpon rolling in the canals of Marco Island and hopefully I’ll get to try them out next week with three trips booked for Marco.

Cobia has been a consistent producer in Charlotte Harbor since late May. I haven’t run to many trips up that way but we have hooked or landed at least two on every trip. Most of the fish aren’t the bruisers but they are stout at 15-30 pounds. The key has been to catch thread herring, which has been a little on the difficult side. The artificial reefs in the area are holding small concentrations of nice 6-inch threads. They can be fished on the reefs themselves, drifted in the river mouths or fished on one of the area bridges. All of these places have produced some nice keeper sized cobia.

Snook should be on the top of my list this time of year but they haven’t wanted to play like some of the other species this week. The beaches of Marco Island and Naples are holding plenty of snook. Flies and large live sardines will catch a few. If you want to get real serious about snook fishing this time of year you need to fish at night. You can usually double the amount of snook that you take during the daylight. The outside from Sanibel to Boca Grande Pass will have snook whereever structure is present. Most of these areas are well known and the fish have caught many times. Therefore a strong bite is getting less likely by the day. My best suggestion for catching a very large snook is to get some pinfish or sardines and fish them on a sinker rig around one of the area passes in deep water where the current swirls back. The fish will tend to be on the outside on an falling tide and will be on the inside edges when the tide is rising.

Trout have been a common catch in all areas that I have fished. The flats of Cape Romano and the Burnt Store in Charlotte Harbor are holding trout. Jigs and spoons have produced the majority of the fish with live sardines getting the “gators” over 20 inches.

My east coast trips out of Jupiter have been limited this year due to my new marriage and honeymoon as well as the demand of a full calendar of requests to book trips on the west coast. However, I did manage to run one trip in the Atlantic on the 30th of June. We ran the beach south to Juno Beach and spotted a large pod of tarpon but couldn’t get them to hit the sardines I netted. We then went to the inlet and worked on the snook with the live bait and then switched to flies when we got tired. We caught as many 10-15 pound snook as we wanted to one the live bait and managed to get a few to hit the flies without chumming. We also hooked up about a dozen 3 pound blue runners on the flyrods. After the tide started to get muddy we ran offshore and caught bonito,runners and barracuda on flies and bait until the wind kicked up and made things difficult.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

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