Fort Myers Fishing Report

After 9 days of almost unfishable weather we got a reprieve just in time for a full week of charters. This week i have been focusing on very shallow water. The water temps dropped into the lower 50's after the last cold front and its been gradully creaping up each day. Today I started out with 60 degree water and it peaked at 70 degrees at 1 Pm. The only places that I'm finding any really good numbers of fish are over very shallow water with mostly soft bottom. I believe that the shallow water warms up quicker and the softer bottom hold the heat better. Before the fronts I was catching lots of fish with Mirrolures and other hard baits. The bite has not turned on yet with the topwaters and twitch baits. I've had to use live shrimp and Fishbites soft plastic shrimp tails rigged on heaver jigheads. I'm on some really productive areas and were catching a lot of good trout up to 23 inches each day. We are also catching redfish up to 10 pounds on most days. The smaller redfish in the 2-4 pound range are biting the shrimp pretty steady when you find them. I'm also still catching quite a few pompano and flounder mixed in with the redfish and trout. One thing that concerns me is the lack of fish over vast expanses of Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound. I have been rotating about 5 productive areas to keep my charters busy with quality fish but other than those areas there is not a lot of fish around. I have fished dozens of areas that I normally do well and the are litterly not fish in most of them. I guess its best described as feast or famine. If you don't get any bites fairly quickly then a move is in order until you can find an area with some activity. Good Luck, Capt. Scott Hughes Blackwater Charters 941-628-4247 cell www.blackwatercharters.com