Extreme low tides and cool temperatures once again prompted a midmorning start for the day’s charter with 4 guys who appeared to be enjoying their Fort Myers Beach vacation to the fullest. The warming trend had continued with upper 70’s forecasted for the day giving me high expectations. I had 10 dozen live shrimp in the livewell to hopefully tempt some rod bending action. We started where we have been catching fish the past week in the deeper water around Big Carlos Pass. The bite picked up as the tide started flooding in, with small sheepshead, snapper, and ladyfish giving all the guys a taste of our inshore fishing. A few keeper sheepshead came over the rails along with a few nice fish lost as we worked a couple of different spots before the tide was high enough to venture into the back bay. Next, we briefly hunted the beaches for some whitebait to net. There were some scattered around, and a few throws of the net gathered a couple of dozen to add to the shrimp in the livewell. With that we were off to the back bay. We fished some of my favorite grass flats for trout, creeks, oyster bars, and mangrove shorelines for reds and snook without much action at all. So it was back to the deeper water around the pass where we had a great afternoon bite to end the day.



We got double and triple headers with mostly small mangrove snapper, sheepshead and black drum



with several keepers of each, and a nice snook for 1 of the guys.



The 6 hour trip was over before we knew it and it was time to head back and clean their catch of sheepshead and black drum for dinner. And that ended another great day in Estero Bay.