Calm wind and cloud cover made for an amazing day
Capt. Eric Anderson
October 21, 2014
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report
Calm wind and cloud cover made for an amazing day
Every once in a while you have a fishing trip you will always remember, when it seems like the planets line up just right, the weather is perfect, and Murphy's Law took the day off. Today was one of those days for me and my charter clients. From first light until we stopped at 1 PM there was always something biting. At dawn we started throwing top water for redfish and trout and they obligingly hit a variety of top water baits including zara spooks, top dogs, pop-r's and skitter walks. There were some big reds mixed in with the mullet on every flat we tried, and a lot of them made a drag burning run, then dove down in the shallow grass and tore the bait out. We lost five or six big reds in a row to the weeds, probably because the weeds were thick and it was low tide when we started. The trout on the other hand were ready to bite, and other than their usual terrible aim, most had to hit the bait three or four times to finally get hooked. They weren't anything special just your standard 15 to 20 inch speckled trout but we caught and released a bunch of them. I decided to go out and check the passes about 10 AM and everywhere we looked there were schools of ladyfish, bluefish, and Spanish mackerel busting in small pods. Seems like every pass from big Carlos to Wiggins was holding a bunch of fish. We saw a very active bust off of new pass in 12 feet and that turned out to be larger jacks in the 18 to 20 inch range that are perfect on light spinning rods to get the maximum fight. My clients had catch, release, repeat, fishing on those jacks for about 15 minutes before they moved on. Rattle traps were the go 2 bait for the jacks and they are easy for everyone to fish, just cast it out, reel it in as fast as you can and hang on when they hit it. After that I decided to go look for some Snook along the mangroves where there was some current flowing. Sure enough at the first place we stopped it only took two casts using a zara spook before we had the first Snook of the day, again nothing giant just nice 18 to 22 inch Snook that everyone likes to catch.
The surface water temperature this morning was 79.5° which is just about perfect for every inshore species. This coming weekend the weather should be good, so get out there and enjoy what is the peak fall bite. Just about every fish you can think of including the resident Tarpon are all biting very well. For some added fun bring along a fly rod in the eight or nine weight class and the some surface poppers or sliders and have a great time with the trout, and one of those big redfish that will surely pound a Popper!
Capt. Eric Anderson
What A Hawg Charters
[email protected]
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