Ft. Myers - Offshore

Water and Fishing Heat Up Greetings: Our warm weather and good clear water have kept things changing fast offshore this week. Large bait migrations into the area have several pelagic's moving through. I have been fishing hard mostly offshore and near shore but did spend one day in the backwater this week. Offshore over the ledges and hard bottom I found the most consistent fishing was for king mackerel. Mangrove snapper fishing was good but in scattered locations only. If snapper are your game I suggest you go early and move often. Cobia are also moving around out there and some are huge. We trolled when searching for kings then worked jigs and live bait when found with good results. Plus the added excitement of casting to a king is awesome. Inshore within ten miles of the beach spanish mackerel and little tunny's were hitting the glass minnows pretty hard. Little tunny's also called false albacore are and amazing fish to me. How or who ever named them little must have fought some very large fish. These football shaped speeding bullets can rip off drag like few fish I have encountered. Just hook a ten pounder on ten pound line and you will get my drift! I love catching them just for the sound of that drag screaming! White jigs seemed to produce as well as anything. Mono leader testing eighty pounds kept the macks from biting us off to many times. It was a one tide day and blowing when I fished backwater. We netted a well full of nice threadfin's and headed back into Estero Bay. Using hand pick shrimp and threadfin's the bite was slow for us. One snook, one redfish, five jacks, and a gag grouper was our half day effort. We did get half dozen broken lines from big fish under docks. Sincerely, Capt. Rick Featherstone