Monday’s charter was with a couple of guys fishing with me for the first time, from the New England area, staying on Fort Myers Beach. The 3 of us met right on time, just before 7 am at the boat ramp at Lover’s Key where I picked up a few dozen decent shrimp, a couple of bags of ice, and we were off. The first stop was to throw the cast net a few times where we added some pinfish, croakers, mojarro and a couple of whitebaits to the livewell. We put those baits to work right away, and the first fish didn’t take long, a small snook got things started.



After a couple of small snook, a decent redfish decided to join the party.



We tried one other spot without much luck at the top of the high tide, before we made a move and ran the beach and nearshore waters looking for some better baits. Finally found them at the mouth to Matanzas Pass, 2 throws of the net loaded the livewell with nice sized whitebaits. Although we had a decent day up to that point, I always get reinvigorated when we load the livewell with those choice baits, and they didn’t disappoint. At the next fishing spot we found a fantastic trout bite, catching one after another for over an hour.



They were all different sizes, with lots of little ones, several in the slot, and one over 21”.



As the action tailed off we made the move back into Estero Bay to fish the beginning of the outgoing tide. We had to work a lot of shoreline as the rising the sun was heating the water closer and closer to 90 degrees, to find some fish. We managed to catch a few small snapper, ladyfish, and jacks before we found another nice redfish to add to the livewell.



We also got to see 2 large sharks that appeared to be lemon sharks swim right under the boat as we worked our way through the water less than 2 feet deep. The last fish of the day was a drag screaming jack crevalle that gave the young man all he could handle.



With the day ending we made our way back to the ramp, to clean our catch and say our goodbyes until next time, after another great day in Estero Bay.