Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
August 2, 2000
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Fish Early............or Late?

The tarpon are playing hide and seek and they are winning. Last week I ran all over Charlotte Harbor looking for tarpon but couldn’t score on the two days I fished that far north. We have hit the slow season for charter fishing, so I will be only fishing about three days a week. Last week I fished Tuesday and Wednesday in Charlotte Harbor and fished Thursday, Friday and Saturday out of Marco Island. This week I’ll probably only fish two days.

Like I said, the tarpon were hard to find last week in the harbor but that doesn’t mean I got shut out for the week. Marco Island tarpon are around the canals and islands from Gordon pass south to Cape Romano. We landed a nice 20-pounder on light spinning gear near a Naples dock and a 5-pounder near Cape Romano shoals. Both of these fish hit a live sardine.

Charlotte Harbor didn’t pan out for the tarpon but that didn’t stop us from having a productive trip. On Tuesday I fished a half-day with Charles Stiles. We had hoped to hit a couple of tarpon but bait was difficult so we didn’t start fishing until about 10:00 am. We did manage to get a couple of twenty-inch trout and some nice blacktip sharks. It was a slow day but I have fished with Charley many times and he understood that some days just aren’t going to be gangbusters. The large trout did give me an idea about the next trip if we couldn’t find tarpon. The next day I fished with Fred and Scott Lieb. We launched out of Punta Gorda with the hope that the tarpon would be farther up the harbor. They weren’t. We spotted a few medium sized tarpon around the U.S. 41 bridge at the crack of dawn but couldn’t get them to hit artificial lures. Again, bait was very difficult but we did manage to catch a few thread herring and some runners. Before we hit our first stop I saw a cobia swimming around a marker. It hit the thread immediately and Scott wrestled the fish away from the structure. We spotted another and threw one of the jacks at the second cobia. We didn’t want to use up our last herring. Regardless, the second cobia hit the jack as quick as the first and we bagged our second cobia of the day before 8:00 am. Later on that afternoon we hooked two more but didn’t get them to the boat.

Trout are thick around the grass flats of Charlotte Harbor. We caught about a dozen or more casting a small sardine under a float while chumming for pinfish. We could have caught a couple of limits but our goal was tarpon and we didn’t stay once we had enough pinfish to try for tarpon.

Jacks are still giving customers tired arms in Marco Island and around the 41 bridge in Punta Gorda. Live sardines are the preferred bait but plugs and flies will do in a pinch.

Snook have been hitting very good early and late. Mike Sember and his buddy Shane fished with me on Friday and they nailed a bunch of good snook to 10-pounds on live sardines. All of these fish hit before 8:00 am. Also, I got some fishing in on Thursday night and the snook were thick and biting almost as good as the mosquitoes. One good catch of note this week was Scott Lieb’s two 20-pound snook using live sardines around the mangroves.

Shark bites have slowed some, but there are still enough to keep you excited. Blacktips to about 50-pounds are roaming Charlotte Harbor and bulls are in and around Boca Grande pass. We caught our blacktips with pinfish and live herring and a buddy of mine reported that they caught a huge bull shark and a couple of small tarpon using cut mullet in Boca Grande Pass.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

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