Big fish of the day caught by Richard Payne of Estero on an 8 hour offshore trip with returning group from the Vanderbilt Fishing Club. The lucky red grouper was successfully released with the season currently closed, but we managed plenty of other fish for everyone to take home dinner.

Continue reading ...

We had a great 8 hour fishing charter this week with returning customers from the Vanderbilt Fishing Club. The highlight of the trip was a nice gag grouper that was asked home to dinner. We also caught lane, mangrove, and yellowtail snapper, along with a few porgys, and plenty of catch and release red grouper.


Continue reading ...

Getting a break from taking people out fishing recently, so what do I do with myself? Go fishing and scuba diving of course. I fished inshore for the first time in forever last week with my first mate and now inshore captain, Andrew. We started as the sun came up and had a great day. We started casting artificials to some juvenile tarpon without any luck. Then Andrew netted some live bait, and that got the bite going with several mid slot redfish, and a handful of small snook before it got to...
Continue reading ...

The nearshore bite continues to be excellent with good numbers of keeper sized red grouper being caught, along with lane snapper up to 16”. We still have to wade through lots of smaller fish to get to the keepers, but that makes for great action for our anglers.



We also had a great 10 hour offshore trip over the last week. The fish are definitely bigger the farther out you go. The catch included a limit of red grouper up to 30”, a nice big gag grouper, lots of nice lane and vermillion sna...
Continue reading ...

Even though we fish extensively in the salt water, both inshore and offshore, my boy is hooked on freshwater bass fishing also. So we spent a good bit of time over the last week finding and fishing some accessible water around the neighborhood.



Results have been varied, but no skunkings yet, even if it’s just a Mayan Cichlid or Oscar or 2. Last trip was the best with the 2 of us landing 10 bass or so up to 2 pounds or so.



We also got a few of his buddies out for a nearshore trip on the big ...
Continue reading ...

Several nearshore trips over the last week have brought lots of action to our customers. Any charter 6 hours or less we consider a nearshore trip, where we rarely travel over 20 miles, and substantially less for 5 hour trips. This time of year we are able to catch some pretty nice red grouper in that range which has been the case over the last couple of weeks. Catches have included lane snapper up to 16”, mangrove snapper around the same size, porgys, and lots of red grouper, with a few leg...
Continue reading ...

We had an awesome first on board the Fish n Tales this past week. On our farthest charter to date out into the gulf we hooked and landed our first sailfish.



We saw the fish on the surface while at anchor in slick calm conditions. One of our anglers quickly pinned a small live bait onto the hook of a fairly small spinning reel and pitched it out. After just a few minutes we had an estimated 50-60# sailfish leaping and tail walking across the surface for us, before getting it to the boat. The l...
Continue reading ...

We’ve been doing long trips over the last week from 10 to 24 hours were the fishing continues to be hot. Red grouper fishing has been easy with fish up to 32”, and limits on every trip.



We just completed our last red snapper trip with nice fish up to about 28”. We had our best catch of gag grouper on our most recent long range trip, with several fish up to 36”.



While not getting big numbers of gags, we are getting at least a few on every trip. Although 1 big fish was caught on a dead ...
Continue reading ...

We’ve been having some great fishing on the Fish n Tales out of Fish Tale Marina over the last few weeks. Gag grouper season just opened on July 1, and we are able to continue fishing for red snapper for another week or so making our long range trips off the hook.



We need to do minimum 24 hour trips to get out far enough to catch the red snapper here on our boat, but when we get out that far we are in the land of giant grouper as well.



On recent trips we have caught easy limits of red snapp...
Continue reading ...

We’ve had lots of trips over the last few weeks with excellent results. The red grouper have been very cooperative biting both live and dead baits.



On our 10 hour trips we are bringing back limits of red grouper on just about every trip. Many fish are over 24” and we are getting plenty over 30”.



Results have been similar on 8 hour trips with big numbers of fish brought aboard but necessarily as big.



We made it out to a wreck on a 12 hour trip and caught a bunch of Greater Amberjack betw...
Continue reading ...

The last couple of weeks have seen the best fishing of the year so far for us aboard the Fish n Tales.



The winter cold fronts have subsided and the weather has been great allowing us to run almost every day. The red grouper bite has been excellent on our 10 hour trips with us catching limits on just about every trip. A good percentage of the fish have been over 25” up to about 30”.



An 8 hour trip also saw us catch a limit in the last week. The water temperature is definitely warming which...
Continue reading ...

The weather has made it a little tough on a few trips over the last week, but the fishing continues to be excellent. Our focus continues to be filling the fish box with red grouper on our 8-10 hour trips.



We are also able to get out far enough to where the Amberjack are on our 10 hour trips. The Amberjacks definitely prefer a nice live bait, so be sure to have a bunch in the livewell if you are going to target them.



We have been catching good numbers of red grouper up to 32” except for one ...
Continue reading ...

It's been another great week fishing on board the Fish N Tales. The red grouper have definitely moved farther offshore, but we are catching limits to near limits of fish on our 8 and 10 hour trips.



Many of the grouper are over 24" up to about 30".



The porgies are still biting well when we use the lighter tackle and small pieces of squid. Both offshore and nearshore we are also finding nice mangrove snapper, and most recently we had a great catch of lane snapper. It's been tougher to find a...
Continue reading ...

I had a fun trip last week with a diehard group of returning fisherman for their third consecutive year fishing inshore with me. The only day they could fish just happened to be the coldest day of the year for us so far, with temperatures in the upper 40s, and the wind blowing at 20 for our 7am start.  And still one of the guys showed up in shorts, those guys from up north can be nuts at times. With numb hands I baited their hooks with live shrimp at the first stop where we caught a few whiti...
Continue reading ...

The weather has been great to bring in the New Year, allowing us to fish just about every day over the last couple of weeks. And the offshore fishing has been excellent.



The amberjack have moved into their wintertime habitat, and they are large and hungry to start the season.



We have caught as many as 7-8 on a recent trip, and have caught them every time we have fished for them on 8-10 hour offshore trips. The grouper have also been more than cooperative on our longer trips with some very nic...
Continue reading ...

The offshore bite continues to be great. We are catching lots of porgies, some of the best eating fish in the gulf, mangrove snapper, and some surprisingly large yellowtail snapper. Lots of red grouper have been giving our anglers great battles on spinning gear, even though they still have to be released for another few days. The good news is that red grouper will once again be able to be harvested starting January first 2015 in federal waters where we mainly fish. The limits will still be a ...
Continue reading ...

I have fished a couple of near shore and offshore trips over the last week or so with some excellent fishing to show for it. The 5 hour near shore trip was on the last day of gag grouper season for us in the Gulf of Mexico with Carla and Michael from St. Louis.



We caught grunts, lane snapper, quite a few out of season red grouper up to 26” or so, and 1 nice gag grouper over 30” to finish out the 2014 season on them.



We caught the fish on frozen squid, sardines, live shrimp, and frozen spo...
Continue reading ...

Fishing has been excellent the last few weeks, despite our recent bouts with colder weather. The sheepshead bite has been excellent with plenty of fish caught on every trip.



We have also caught some nice black drum alongside the sheepies, along with some small redfish, pompano, and jack crevalles. Most of our fishing has been in the deeper water around the passes, where we have also caught a few small spotted sea trout as well.



The trick to catching the sheepshead is keeping the rod tip low a...
Continue reading ...

After what seems like forever we finally have easy access to great live bait again. I’ve had several inshore fishing trips over the last couple of weeks where we started each day loading the livewell with scaled sardines, AKA whitebait. We have put the bait to good use on every trip with excellent bites, fishing mostly around mangrove shorelines on the higher stages of the tides.



We have caught as many as 30 snook in just a few hours with chances at several slot and over slot fish on every t...
Continue reading ...

Time to catch up the reports again, after another great couple of trips. We had one of my best trips so far on the offshore boat.



It was a ten hour trip and we got to head out where the big ones live, before the sun was even up.





We got the group a limit of red grouper with several of them over 30” and none under 24”.



We are still having to get out to deeper water to catch legal size fish over 20”, but when we get out there, they are chewing.





The gag grouper are still in close and we have ...
Continue reading ...

I just had to share a big milestone catch on an offshore charter this week. The sharks have really started to show offshore adding some great excitement to our trips. On Tuesday while fighting what turned out to be a 7’ or so Sandbar Shark that took over 40 minutes on 30# spinning gear, another shark was hooked on heavier 50# test 4/0 gear. The shark on heavier gear came up comparatively quickly and Captain Scott and I couldn’t have been happier to see the first ever Tiger Shark for eithe...
Continue reading ...

I had a good charter last week with a very nice couple visiting Naples from Tampa. We fished the 10,000 Islands out the ramp just before Marco Island. With the hot weather and anticipated afternoon rains typical of this time of year, we met at 7am. We started to a very slow bite in the back country early, in the extremely stirred up water from the torrential rains we’ve been having. So we quickly changed the game plan and fished some beaches near a major pass for snook. They were not feedin...
Continue reading ...

What a great charter on Monday. The first time Canadian customers wanted to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary by treating themselves to a day on the water while staying in their vacation home here in sunny south west Florida. The day’s request for the 4 hour fishing charter was for action, not necessarily spending hours fighting any big fish. It was bit of a struggle obtaining any live bait for the day’s trip, but finally the third bait house I tried sold us about the last 50 shrim...
Continue reading ...

While at the Carl Johnson Boat Ramp at Lover’s Key waiting on my clients Sunday morning, I met a couple of guys looking to fish as much as possible while they were together in Fort Myers. They were waiting on their Captain booked for the day, but wanted a charter Monday as well for which their Captain was not available.  I gave them a card and told them to call me that evening, as the 4 guys from Canada loaded my boat for their day’s adventure. We had an awesome day on Estero Bay, with th...
Continue reading ...

Upon telling my good friend Scott about the previous day’s excellent charter and the fact that I thought about calling him to meet me, he said that’s it let’s go now. It took about 30 seconds for me to think about the snook bite we could find and I said OK, let’s do it. I had the boat loaded and met at the ramp in less than an hour at the bright and early hour of about 10:30am. The wind was up more than we had hoped as we sped across Estero Bay to the bait spot on the gulf side of For...
Continue reading ...

I’m just getting a chance to catch up on the fishing reports from last week. I had several charters and they all went well. We have been fishing the near shore waters looking for tarpon and catching a ton of sharks, Spanish mackerel, trout, and whiting.



At times the bite has been crazy with up to 10 Sharpnose sharks around the boat, with a couple hooked, and spinner and bull sharks chasing and eating the mackerel we are catching, big fun.



Being able to catch nice bait every day is a big part...
Continue reading ...

I had charters on both of the coldest days of the year here on Estero bay in Fort Myers Florida. Tuesday’s trip was by far the colder of the days, but the fishing was better. We fished a full day and caught a good bunch of keeper sheepshead with a bunch of shorts.



We also caught quite a few jack crevalles, ladyfish and small mangrove snapper, along with 1 nice big spotted sea trout.



One of the guys also caught a pretty big stingray, which gave us some great excitement for the trip. As we had...
Continue reading ...

Monday’s scheduled 4 hour charter on Estero Bay in South West Florida started right on time with a couple of avid fisherman from Minnesota. We met at 9am at the Carl Johnson Boat Ramp at Lover’s Key and had the dolphins join us almost immediately as we headed for Big Carlos pass to look for bait to gather with the net. We looked inside the bay as well for bait and dropped a line in an area of grass flats where some pelicans were diving and finding some kind of small fish to eat. After a c...
Continue reading ...

Bepops, AKA grandpa, was back in town for the weekend and we met for a morning of 10,000 Islands fishing action starting out of Marco Island. With our son and my better half joining my dad and me on his boat, there were 3 generations headed out together.



We had a great time, very nearby, catching a bunch of small snook, snapper, ladyfish, and one nice redfish.



There’s nothing prettier than the morning sun shining brilliantly off a golden redfish!



I believe we all caught at least a few snook ...
Continue reading ...

With the kids out of school, after a great year, I was able to escape to the water, with just my son and nephew to Estero Bay for the day. It was also my Nephew’s birthday, so the days’ itinerary was all up to the kids. We started, per request, looking for some spotted sea trout by drifting shallow grass flats with live shrimp under popping corks. With not a bite, and a too fast drift anyhow, we idled to a nearby point where we got the fish catching started. Several snapper came to the bo...
Continue reading ...

I was able to share a great day on the water with the family and a good friend over the weekend. The trip started out of Weeks Fish Camp where a nest full of ospreys hollered at us the entire time it took us to launch the boat.

Our first stop was to pick up our friend Scott at the Big Carlos Bridge, as he couldn’t spend the whole day with us, and it’s a good central location for a quick drop off. With everyone on board we headed to the beaches of Lover’s Key in search for bait, where Sco...
Continue reading ...

With the holiday weekend approaching and the whole family having a day off together, we made grand plans for my better half’s first fishing trip in over a month. The plan was to head down to Chockoloskee, and fish some near shore wrecks, as well as look for tarpon in Everglades National Park. Well, that plan went down the drain as my better half heard forecasts of 40mph winds associated with a cold front pushing through South Florida into Friday morning. With that, our hopes were that the b...

Continue reading ...

Had the chance to fish today, with 2 old friends from my high school days, out of Estero Bay in Fort Myers Florida. The 3 of us left Weeks fish camp about 9 am or so with several dozen shrimp and high expectations. Unfortunately the calm conditions I had hoped for were blown away by the stiff breeze that greeted us as we idled our way out of the channel. The tide was still fairly low and the water was milky from the stiff breeze but I still wanted to look for some live bait to add to the shri...

Continue reading ...

     We got to spend a few days out of Marco Island with family over the weekend and managed to get some fishing in. We arrived at my parent's incredible new waterfront home in Marco, that will be for rent soon, to hear stories of the Goodland boat parade that we missed on Saturday. It sounded highly entertaining with highlights of tremendous beer bellies, hula skirts, and coconut bikinis all on the same characters. A quick run to Grimms in Everglades city for some stone crab claws for the we...

Continue reading ...