Fishing continues to be good throughout the entire Southwest Florida area. Great reports from ten-thousand islands all the way to Boca Grande came in all week. The continuation of afternoon storms and light winds should keep these reports coming. The summer pattern of rain every day has slowly been filling up the canals, lakes, and creeks that eventually feed into our bays and then the gulf. This is great for the estuaries as the nutrient water feeds small bait fish, crabs, and lowers the salinity in areas.
The inshore bite will continue to be strong. Snook are now on all the beaches, around all the river mouths, and certainly any near shore wrecks. Live pilchards have worked best, but pinfish, mojarra, and even shrimp have worked as well. Redfish continues to be great, with a lot more upper slot and over slot fish being caught than in years past. The closers on harvest of snook, redfish, and trout are paying off. Juvenile tarpon continue to be found more frequently throughout the area and those fishing first and last light will have opportunities to catch them for many months to come.
The nearshore waters as well as offshore became full of anglers going after gag grouper all week. Lots of fish were caught from as shallow as 20 feet all the way out to 120. Great reports came from several anglers trolling in 30-40 feet using deep diving plugs. These anglers limited out quickly several days for these delicious fish. Tarpon continue to be caught as they should through the summer using crabs, threadfin herring, and large paddle tail swim baits. The numbers caught this past week were not that impressive, but it always seems to come in waves around here.
The offshore boats have run a bunch of trips, minus a few days when the winds got strong. Mangrove snappers up to 7lbs, mutton snappers some pushing 15lbs, and gag grouper have been filing coolers all week. Good reports on lane snappers continue for those that are staying inside 70 feet. There were a few boats that got into 120+ feet of water and are still finding blackfin tuna, as well as African pompano and AJ’s on the drop offs and wrecks. Red snappers continue to be caught in these deeper areas and are opening up for recreational anglers so I’ll expect to see a bunch of those coming in soon.
Tight lines, Capt. Greg Stamper
Snookstampcharters.com Fort Myers beach
239-313-1764