Book your Boca Grande Tarpon Fishing Charters

I have been steadily booking charters for tarpon fishing in Boca Grande and Charlotte Harbor for April through July. At the rate I have been booking trips I hope to have a full schedule locked in sometime in March. If you are looking to book a tarpon charter for a large group in May and June I suggest you do it soon. A tarpon charter with multiple boats involved takes some long range planning to secure other quality guides for your group.

January 2013 monthly recap

I had a decent January in regards to the number of charters I ran. Historically January is one of my slower months. I fish strictly flats fish on my charters in January for redfish, trout, and snook. There was and still is as of today (Feb 1, 2013) a presence of red tide in the Boca Grande area. There has been a red tide bloom off and on in Boca Grande since October. I fished the Boca Grande Backcountry one day in January. I fished the turtle bay area. The redfishing was slow but I had the cutest little 4 year old girl in the world catch her first redfish this month, my daughter Jordin reeled in this 15 inch redfish all on her own.

boca grande fishing charters

I ran all of my charters this past month out of Pineland Marina located in Northern Pine Island Sound. I normally fish all of my winter charters out of Pine Island. I have found the flats fishing in Pine Island to be better than the Boca Grande area. The trout fishing has been below average this year for me, I’m not sure if it is because of the warm winter we have had or because trout are now allowed to be fished for commercially. I have caught some rather large trout this year though, I have caught many over the 24 inch mark. The redfishing has been average, not great. Redfishing is never great in January, as the tides get higher this month the redfishing will get much better. There are a lot of redfish around but between the cooler water and the gin clear water in Pine Island they can be spooky. Last week I ran three charters down in Pine Island and we caught at least 5 redfish every trip.  I had my clients using mangrove red exude jerk baits with a 5/0 mustad keeper hook and 15# leader. I was fishing some decent sized schools of redfish, 100 plus fish in each school. We would hook a fish then the school would get spooked off. We would have to wait about 20 minutes in between fish for the school of redfish to calm down and swim back toward us so we could get another shot.

Offshore Fishing in January

I fished offshore 4 times in January, this was the last month to keep grouper until the season re-opens April 1st. I have been fishing 35-60 miles offshore of Boca Grande in water from 100-160 feet deep. The target species has been red grouper. We fish 4 guys on every trip and we caught a 4 man limit on each of the 4 times we made it out. Bait of choice has been live pin fish and cut squirrelfish. The grouper are anywhere from anout 10 pounds up to 25 pounds. The key this time of year is to start early as some days it took all day to catch our limit. I also caught some very nice red snapper last week in the 15 pound range, we caught them in 115 feet of water. Normally we don’t catch red snapper in that shallow of water but I wasn’t complaining. Here are a few pics of our offshore trips.

boca grande grouper fishing

Boca Grande red snapper

boca grande grouper fishing