Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Capt. Scott Hughes
November 5, 2001
Fort Myers - Saltwater Fishing Report

Bad weather = Ok fishing

I have one question to ask. Who cursed the wind gods? Let me give a breakdown of our weather for the past 14 days. Cold front, followed by a week of 20-knot winds, followed by a hurricane, followed by another cold front. The forecasters are calling for more beautiful weather with a “pleasant breeze” of 20 knots for this week. I did get out once last week with new customer Scott Herrington.

Scott was down in Marco Island for a week and we postponed our trip a couple of days due to the high winds. Scott was tired of playing golf and doing the “beach” thing so we decided to give it a shot. We met at 7:15 AM and headed to Marco River for bait. We netted full load of 5 inch scaled sardines near the mouth of the river and were heading to do some backcountry fishing when we spotted thousands of gulls and pelicans diving off Tigertail Beach. At first I thought they were jacks and mackerel feeding on glass minnows but when we hooked up with a 10-pound false albacore tuna on a 6 pound test “trout” rod I knew we in trouble. The first few fish kicked our butts by taking us into the school and breaking the light line. We got out my snook rods and started throwing jigs and iron at them and finally landed about 15 nice tuna from 8-12 pounds. We still had plenty of fish break us off in the school. The bonita or little tunny which they are sometimes called were running a bout a mile offshore and with the winds blowing offshore at 20-25 the seas were only about 2 feet.

About 11:30 we ate some lunch and headed to one of my favorite tarpon holes in the backcountry with the hopes of topping the day off with a nice poon to test our sore arms. The water was clear and we had great bait but we only had one nice hit in about an hour and a half. Not wanting to end the day on a slow note we decided to try a few spots for snook. I’d been catching good numbers of snook and redfish in this area for a month and was sure we would get something going. The wind was blowing even harder and most of my holes weren’t fishable but we did find a spot out of the wind and caught a couple of ladyfish and three jacks about 5-pounds. All in all, it was a good day despite the conditions.

The fishing forecast for the next week is not good. The front that is pushing the hurricane will bring colder winds at least until Thursday. The water was already in the sixties last week so this front and all the rain will drop them even further. It looks like jigs and shrimp will be the routine for the back and mackerel and bluefish should be off the beaches when the seas calm down.

Good Luck!

Capt. Scott Hughes

Blackwater Charters

863-946-9171

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