Report for Naples, Marco Island and the Ten Thousand Islands
Capt. Matt Hoover
July 13, 2000
Marco Island - Saltwater Fishing Report
Slow Tides
We are in between a new and a full moon. It is called a neep or nip tide. These types of tides are week and move slow. Certain times of the year will produce slower tides. If the tide moved any slower this past week, it would have been in reverse. What does that have to do with fishing? The fish don’t bite as well to put it simple. They like to congregate at a point of interest where the tide is moving and pushing food to them. Fish are lazy about their food just like we are. Think of a point on an island where the current flows as being like a drive up window at a fast food joint. There has to be movement or they don’t get excited about it. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t get fish. Most of us found that we had to bump and run until we did.
There has been plenty of bait. Jigs, lures and flies worked ok. You just had to keep pushing this week. And you had to get the job done before noon as far as most of us were concerned. If the slow high tide didn’t nix you, the heat or rains would ace you out. That’s not bad. It’s like sneaking in nine holes of golf before an afternoon nap. Traffic on the water has slowed down considerably and so have the fishing reports. Guides that left from my dock were still catching numbers of small snook on live bait. We had to go to a lot of spots to find one that would produce. A few redfish were brought in to the table this week. They seem to be making a better show. The snappers have been out in full force. It’s hard to get by them. Some of them have been big too. Mangrove snapper will take you to the bushes if you get to lax with them.
Small to medium size tarpon are milling around. There are a few large one fish out there too. I had anglers Charlie Kalb and his son in law Tod out the other day. Tod threw his bait to a point and a tarpon exploded out of the water. The fish was forty pounds or better. We were using ten-pound test line. That put the odds in the favor of the fish. Tod was able to subdue the fish after about twenty minutes. We caught snook and redfish that day as well.
The speed on the tides will pick up by next week. That should make the fish bite better. I t has been unbelievably hot on the water so go prepared with lots to drink. Cover up and stay cool I’ll see you on the water.
More Fishing Reports:
