Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Snook and Jack's Attack! We managed to get in a few trips in between the hurracanes Isadore and Lilly this week. When the seas finally subsided, the bait was easy but most of the week 4-6 ft swells kept most of us hiding deep into the backcountry. Last weekend, the seas calmed down enough to get outside on the beaches and we caught a mixture of spanish sardines, scaled sardines and thread herring. After the storm the fish were really hungry so we decided to try for snook and redfish in the upper 10,000 Islands. The snook were plentiful but the redfish were nonexistent. We caught double digits of snook each day while pitching outside points on the higher tide stages and oyster bars as the tide lowered. Slot sized snook were hard to come buy. Most of the fish were in the 22-25 inch range. Big jack crevelle put up the best battles for my anglers this week. We ran into a couple of schools offshore that were running on the large side for the west coast. We landed jacks from 12-17 pounds on the outside and we also found some schools of backcountry fish that were running 5-8 pounds. We caught them using the same live baits that we were using for the snook. The only other species that made much of a showing was trout. We didn't target trout on my trips last week but we did pick up three nice keepers to 20 inches in some of my snook holes on Sunday. Again, sardines were the bait that did the trick. When seas were to big to get on the outside for bait most anglers pitched srimp tipped jigs deep into the backcountry. Good catches were reported with small snook, ladyfish, snapper, and small jacks making up most of the catch. A few small grouper and some flounder were also mixed into the bag for the week. The forecast for the next few days is not good for live bait fishermen. Hurracane Lilly is pushing huge swells this way again for the second time within a week. Throwing artificials in the backcountry is probably in order. Overall, as soon as these storms move out of our way the fishing should peak sometime between the middle of October and Thanksgiving. The 10,000 Islands will have another tarpon push sometime this fall and the larger snook will come out and play when the mullet start to run around the passes.