Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
September 8, 2001
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Seeing Red!

The fishing in Charlotte Harbor is starting to move into a fall pattern. Redfish have taken over the top spot from the tarpon and snook are in season but catching a keeper has been anything but automatic.

The last two weeks have produced good to excellent fishing for reds. The bars on the west and east side of the harbor have produced up to 40 reds per trip. Chumming has been the key to keeping the fast moving schools of large reds around the boat long enough to catch the unbelievable numbers. The creeks off of Alligator Creek also have been holding medium sized redfish.

There are still large numbers of tarpon in the 100-pound class roaming Charlotte Harbor. Locating these fish haven't been as big a problem as getting them to bite. Large live ladyfish have drawn the most strikes for me this week. Look for the tarpon busting schools of spanish sardines in the Peace and Myakka Rivers.

Snook season is open but very few keeper sized snook have been caught. Last Monday we landed about a dozen snook off the channel at Pirate Harbor. The largest of these snook was 24 inches. Small spanish sardines also produced a couple of redfish while snook fishing.

Other species that we caught this week were trout, and Bonnethead sharks. A few trout have moving along the sanbars with the refish and they have hitting the sardines along with some bonnethead sharks when chumming heavy with livies.

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