Ft. Myers - Offshore

Capt. Rick Featherstone
March 15, 2004
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Spring Time

Greetings,

Spring is in the air for sure. Problem for me though this week has been the flu keeping me off my game. On the days I got out bait was abundant, a throw or two and the live well was blacked out. Lots of bait in the area now so the headliners like tarpon, permit and kings will not be far behind if not here now.

Backwater and near shore fishing has been very good. Big jacks, snook, Spanish mackerel, pompano are all being caught. Our luck came mostly in the high portion of the tide. Jigs and shrimp were hard to beat, but it’s a blast to get those jacks into a frenzy live chumming scaled sardines. The near shore reef is still producing good numbers of sheepshead also, we caught several big ones on shrimp. All released.

Offshore we had a red hot light tackle grouper bite on Friday. We were permit hunting but found conditions tough with the sea conditions so we hit a small piece of structure twelve miles out. We caught 68 red and gag grouper from 12” to 24” in two hours, all except one came on twelve pound spinning gear. WOW, that was awesome rod bending action! Scaled sardines worked best. Try as I might though I was unable to chum up a king, shark or anything else but we had a great time with the grouper. Three permit were spotted but no casts were made.

Team Gotim on, Mark Combs, MJ Combs, Brittany Combs, Myself and Liz will be competing again next weekend in the Fort Myers Kingfish Tournament. We will be out this week pre fishing and catching bait. I will keep you posted on our success.

Tight Lines,

Capt. Rick

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