Marco Island, Ft. Myers & Boca Grande

Opportunity Fish Last week I had trouble finding the tarpon in Charlotte Harbor. This week we found them right in the middle of the harbor in the deep drifts. I haven’t done much fishing around for different types of species lately. This mainly because of the lack of business for chartering this time of year. I am running about 8-10 trips this month. It also gives me a chance to do some needed repairs to my boat and trailer. Like I mentioned earlier, we found good numbers of tarpon in Charlotte Harbor this week. They showed a marked preference for pinfish fished under a float. Most of these fish were in the 80-100 pound class. We used threads and sand trout for bait also, but all that they attracted were sharks. Sharks kept us tying lines most of the time while we were waiting for the tarpon to bite. Most of the fish were on the small side (under 30 pounds). Almost all of the sharks were blacktips that hit free lined sand trout and thread herring. If you just want nonstop action then trout will oblige. Last Saturday my main target was to catch a couple of limits of trout and then go for the tarpon. Well, when I say that the action was fast you can’t possibly understand how instant it was. First I netted a load of two inch scaled sardines. Our plan was to fish these small baits under popping corks to attract the trout while the flats were slick. As soon as we threw out our first cast we were in the fish. We caught at least 40 fish in one hour! I’m not joking. That figure is probably on the low side. After a while it was boring getting a fish on every cast so we broke out the fly rods and caught about 15 more on flies. Actually, the flies produced bigger fish than did the live bait. The only drawback to the whole morning was the size of the fish. We had to wade through lots of undersized fish to get keepers. We found huge schools of sand trout in the middle of the harbor while fishing for tarpon. Just drop a small jig to the bottom and jig it up and down. We caught about twenty for tarpon bait and I kept a few to eat. They are very small, growing to only about 14 inches. I used to catch them and fry them up when I was a kid. It had been a long time since I had eaten any and we had plenty. I’m sure that the snook and redfish are doing their thing in Marco Island and in the passes of the barrier islands. I just haven’t had a trip with that kind of fishing as a target. Live sardines would be my top choice. I have some trips out of Marco next week so I’ll give you an update then. Good Luck! Capt. Scott Hughes Blackwater Charters 863-946-9171 [email protected]