Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Water Temps drop. Blues, Jacks and Grouper top catches. I didn’t get out last week very much after a busy week around Thanksgiving. The weather wasn’t very good at times and I’ve been battling a serious chest cold. I did fish out of Marco Island in some very wet conditions and produced some excellent catches. This report is just from what I encountered this week with limited time on the water. Grouper are in almost all of my snook holes because of the cold water. They always move inshore during the winter. This year seems to be better than most because the water temperatures are already below 70 degrees. We caught some nice keeper grouper on my trips over Thanksgiving and we landed 7 on my one trip this week. Use live sardines around any type of structure in deep water and you’ll get a hook up! That doesn’t mean that you’ll get them to the boat. They are extremely strong and their first run to the structure is as strong as any snook. Big Jack Crevelle are still cruising the flats at high tide. We caught over 20 to 15-pounds using live sardines, cut bait and flies. The sardines produced the larger fish while the flies caught jacks under 5-pounds. Bluefish are running near structure just offshore of Naples and Marco Island. We boated 10 keeper size blues with live sardines and cut bait. The cut bait is much more effective because they cut most of the live baits in half. Free line steaks of ladyfish, mullet or sardines and use heavy mono leader to reduce the amount of cutoffs. Wire can be used, but they seemed to be leader shy. Other notable species that we caught were tarpon and tripletail. We sight cast about a 3-pound tripletail offshore of Everglades City. It hit a steak of sardine. Look for them holding on crab trap markers. The majority of them have moved on, but there are always a few around. We also jumped an estimated 90-pound tarpon that hit a live sardine. After an exciting strike and jump the hook pulled. That’s the way it goes with tarpon. Don’t be surprised with an occasional hook-up on tarpon in the winter, but don’t hold your breath either. They are few and far between in the winter. Good Luck! Capt. Scott Hughes Blackwater Charters 863-946-9171