Welcome to August in Southwest Florida. If you're new to the area, don't worry, it starts getting much cooler this month. Just kidding! It's about to get so much worse. Expect it to be in the 90's by lunchtime every day along with some dangerous heat indexes. But that's what the swimming pool was invented for and you chose to come here, so toughen up. Besides, the afternoon thunderstorms usually drop it down a few degrees for a short amount of time each day.
I can give you one bit of good news about the late summer. The fishing gets even better, especially for tarpon. Last year we had the best summer tarpon season I've ever experienced here on Pine Island. This year also started off great for the migratory schools starting in April out in Pine Island Sound.
Unfortunately, the smaller fish thinned out or were no shows at some of their regular spots around my home base on Matlacha. I'm going to give our two hurricanes from last fall the blame for shifting some of the resident tarpon to parts unknown for now. I don't have a lot more to say about that except I'm using this as an excuse to spend more time exploring and hoping to track them down. It's a great big Gulf of America out there.
The early season tarpon that did pour through in June as expected were a little tough to feed with the fly rod. We had an absolute blast chasing them and my customers were rarely disappointed with the shots they got. I did have several trips where I was banging my head against my fly box trying to find a pattern that would get an eat. "They don't get that big by being stupid," was a line I repeated a lot after watching a huge tarpon briefly follow a fly and then slowly turn away right under the bow. It happened a lot, especially up in Charlotte Harbor, but their sheer numbers really drove home how great our tarpon fishery still is these days.
At the end of June, the few pods of juvenile tarpon I could find really started eating. That's not unexpected with the smaller fish and by early July it was off the charts at a couple of my favorite spots in Pine Island Sound. We had several mornings with a half dozen tarpon to the boat, all on very light fly rods. The fish in the photo came from shorelines just a few minutes from Pineland.
I also got to go out with some new anglers for the first time in quite a while at the height of tarpon season this year. I sadly lost a couple long-time customers due to health issues last year but that's another article altogether. The new folks who came down were thrilled with our area and one of them even bought a place in Ft. Myers at the end of his week.
He'll be a great neighbor, even though he's an Eagles fan.
I'm actually surprized with the amount of folks who are still coming down to fish after the beating we took last hurricane season. This has been one of my busiest years guiding and the phone is still ringing for the fall. It's nice to be able to fit some new charters in and send them to friends, too. Can't complain about that.
Short article this month since I haven't had much free time to sit in front of the laptop. Hope you're out on the water just as much, too.
If you are, be sure check out Nautical Mile’s new project. They’ve mapped out every water-access in the state and created a free downloadable GoogleMap. Steer yourself towards some of the great bars and restaurants we have here in Florida who offer boat dockage.
Best of luck out there.
Capt. Gregg Mckee
Wildfly Fishing Charters
Matlacha, Florida
