Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Tarpon Exit. Tripletail Return. Reds Rebound! The past two weeks have produced some great catches even when the weather wasn’t great. Early last week we were still hooking good numbers of tarpon during their fall migration south to the Florida Keys. That changed, however, when a small cold front passed through and picked up the wind and pushed the migration out of our area. We will probably see a few more come into our are before Christmas, but the majority has passed us for this year. Tarpon was the main target until a few days ago when the wind picked up and moved most of the tarpon out of the area south of Marco Island. Most of the tarpon caught were under 50-pounds with the exception of an 80-pounder caught Dave Calverly and his buddy Lewis. (Sorry I forgot your last name Lewis). Capt. Bill Jones also reported that two of his customers hooked very large tarpon on flies south of Everglades City. Some of the most fun fishing this fall has been the sight fishing for tripletail. Last Friday Dave Debrocca and his cousin Mike landed five out of eight hooked with two being over 8-pounds. We spotted 13 tripletail that day! Great tripletail fishing is also being reported out of the Ft Myers area. Check the crab trap markers and the channel markers in Pine Island Sound and off the beach. Third on the list this week is snook. This doesn’t mean the fishing for snook wasn’t good because it was very good. It’s just that the other two species that I mentioned was better. Small snook to 28-inches continue to produce consistent catches over a dozen fish or more on just about every trip. We have been catching them off the points of the outer islands with live sardines and cut bait. Larger snook to 34 inches are being caught in the back bays where the creeks dump into the bays. After the front came through the winds kicked up and shut down the tarpon, tripletail and snook fishing. We had to resort to fishing the backcountry of the upper 10,000 Islands with artificial lures and cut bait. Usually right after a cold front the fishing shuts down but this week we managed to pull out some good catches of redfish and trout. The reds hit jigs tipped with shrimp and cut bait. We picked them up along the channels leading to the middle bays. For the trout we used the jigs along with gold spoons fished around the islands leading into the middle bays. Its too bad the trout are out of season until January 1st because most of the trout were 15-20 inches. The reds were as small as 16 inches and as large as 24 inches. The only other species of note were spanish mackerel and king mackerel. Both species were running bait schools about 2 miles offshore before the winds picked up with the front and muddied up the water. Look for birds and you will find the mackerel. Fish with light line or flies for the most fun. Good Luck! Capt. Scott Hughes Blackwater Charters 863-946-9171