Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Excellent light tackle action! As I am sitting down to write this report the strongest cold front of the fall is bearing down on us just in time for the weekend. It’s packing temperatures into the 50’s and winds 20-25 knots that will shut down the fishing for the next few days. Last week however, produced some very solid catches of snook, redfish, jack crevelle, snapper and trout. Snook fishing was very good last week for juveniles under 10-pounds. We used live sardines to average 8-10 snook on my half-day trips and up to 30 on full-day trips. Look for mangrove points with good current and dead mangroves near shallow flats. Larger snook have been around the sandbars near the passes. Redfish catches were almost as good this week except the numbers weren’t as consistent. We averaged a few reds each trip last week with 11 in the 5-8 pound class on Saturday. Live sardines were the best bait, although Love Lure jigs tipped with shrimp caught some also. Jack crevelle are schooling around all of the passes of the 10,000 Islands. We caught jacks from 3-6 pounds on live sardines and flies. Most days averaged 12-20 jacks of this size. Chartreuse Deceivers and Bendback patterns were the most productive for the jacks. Snapper have been a consistent catch near the mangroves along with the snook. They have been eating the small 3-inch sardines like candy. Deeper holes on low tide will concentrate these tasty fish so they can be better targeted. We have been able to muster up a few limits per trip and full-day charters. Trout catches have improved over the last few weeks for my customers. Not that the fishing wasn’t good before, but we haven’t been fishing areas where trout frequent. We picked up a few in the passes south of Marco Island with jigs and live baits. If you can get a bait past the ladyfish then there are some good numbers of trout on the grassflats south of Round Key. The outlook for this week is up in the air with this front pushing down on us. The first few cold snaps of the fall can really turn off the fishing. I have a few trips this week and we’ll probably be pitching jigs in the deep bends of the 10,000 Islands. One point of advice, when the water gets cold fish very slow. Good Luck! Capt. Scott Hughes Blackwater Charters 863-946-9171