Posted by Captain Bill Curtis on Monday, March 3, 2014 Under: Fort Myers
The weather has been absolutely beautiful the last few weeks here is Southwest Florida and the fishing has been great. I have fished inshore in Estero Bay and offshore out of Ft. Myers beach. The inshore catches have been dominated by some nice sheepshead, including one of the biggest I’ve seen in the last couple of years. With the mild weather we’ve been having the scaled sardines have been available, except within a day or so of a cold front, which usually makes a big difference on how well we do.
On the last trip found some nice snook to eat the nice whitebaits we netted, and longtime customer Jack landed a decent one. A few tiny gag grouper, mangrove snapper, and spotted sea trout have also been brought over the gunnels the last few trips. We haven’t made too many far offshore runs the last couple of weeks in the big boat, but when we do the keeper size red grouper have been biting well along with big schools of amberjack on the wrecks.
Near shore we have been getting nice numbers of mangrove and lane snapper, and porgies, along with some big catch and release gag grouper, and a few goliaths up and over 150#. The last trip we found some big numbers of sharks, which was very entertaining for all of us on board and is a good sign for an early spring run of lots of species.