Despite epic fish kill, fishing is still good,

Capt. Scott Hughes
January 17, 2010
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

The extreme cold weather that we had last week killed a epic number of snook in Florida. I counted over 1000 dead snook for the FWC and most of them were "breeder" snook over 28 inches. I have heard reports from all over including lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. One good thing that has come from this is that almost all of the invasive oscar's have been killed out of the Everglades. These tropical fish have displaced bluegill and shell cracker from many of the water ways in the very southern end of the state. Despite the fish kills, the snook should rebound rather quickly because many of the snook winter in the deep rivers and creeks and most of the snook that I saw dead were from islands near the coast.

Other fish like speckled trout and redfish were un affected by the cold and have been chewing since the warm up. I ran three charters last week and we had good days on all of them. The speckled trout bite was excellent with most of the fish being legal 15 inchers or better. Redfish fishing was good also with double digit catches each day that i targeted them. I also goat lucky enough to have my firt tarpon landed of the 2010 season. A nice 90-pounder hit a 1/2 jig with a TTF trout tail and after an hour battle we leader it and took a quick pic. Most of the trout and all of the redfish hit live shrimp bumped along the bottom. I don't see why the fishing for either of these species should drop off since it won't get to cold for them. Worse case for this spring is that if the snook fishing is off we'll have to fish more for kings and sharks nearshore and redfish and trout inshore.

Fort Myers Fishing Forecast:

Excpect trout and redfishing to be good the rest of the winter and well into spring. Hooking and landing a tarpon last week gives me hope that they will run eaarly and strong this year.

Target Species:

redfish, speckled trout

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