Southwest Florida in late August means heat, water, and more heat. Wet season rain has the backcountry rivers running fresh and stained, the passes are moving a lot of water, and the fish have arranged themselves accordingly. The good news is that the pattern is predictable — find moving water with a salinity edge and you will find fish.
What’s Hitting
Snook are the strongest bite in the region. Fish are stacked in Gordon Pass, Doctors Pass, Big Marco Pass and Capri Pass, holding on the down-current side of structure and eating hard on the outgoing tide.
Mangrove snapper are on every piece of hard structure — pass rocks, bridge pilings, dock lines and the nearshore reefs. Redfish are in the backwater on the mangrove edges and oyster bars, best on the higher stages of the tide. Speckled trout are on the deeper grass early. Nearshore, Spanish mackerel, tripletail on the crab trap buoys and a few late tarpon round it out.
Where to Find Them
The passes are the primary snook water. Fish the rocks and the channel edges on the last three hours of the outgoing, when everything living in the back gets flushed out into the Gulf.
In the Ten Thousand Islands and the back of Rookery Bay, work the mangrove points, creek mouths and oyster bars on a rising tide for redfish and juvenile snook. The nearshore reefs and hard bottom in 20 to 40 feet hold mangrove snapper, Spanish mackerel and a scattering of grouper. Tripletail are worth scanning for on the stone crab and marker buoys as you run.
Tides & Conditions
Water temps are in the upper 80s inshore. The wet-season runoff has the Faka Union and Blackwater river systems tannic and fresh well down toward the islands, which pushes the productive salinity line further out than it sits in the dry season.
Tides are moderate this week. Fish the outgoing in the passes and the incoming in the back. Afternoon storms build over the Everglades and roll west almost every day — start early and be watching the radar by one o’clock. Gulf conditions have been light in the mornings.
Tackle & Tactics
For pass snook, a 7-foot-6 medium-heavy spinning outfit, 30-pound braid and 40-pound fluorocarbon leader. Live pilchards or pinfish free-lined into the current seam are the top producer; a half-ounce to one-ounce jighead with a paddletail bounced along the bottom in the pass is the artificial answer.
In the backwater, downsize to 20-pound braid and a 25- to 30-pound leader with a weedless soft plastic or a live shrimp under a popping cork. Mangrove snapper want light fluoro and a small live shrimp fished tight to the pilings. For tripletail, a live shrimp on a 1/0 circle pitched past the buoy and drifted back.
Local Intel This Week
Access points: the Bayview Park ramp on Naples Bay, the Cocohatchee River Park ramp on Vanderbilt Drive, the Caxambas Pass ramp on Marco Island, and Collier-Seminole State Park for the Ten Thousand Islands. Shore anglers can work the Naples Pier and the rocks at Doctors Pass.
Fish are concentrating in the passes on the outgoing and along the salinity edges in the back after the daily rains. Snook and redfish in southwest Florida have had season adjustments in recent years following red tide events — check current FWC regulations and open seasons for this specific region before keeping any fish.
This Week’s Tip
In the passes, the fish are not spread evenly through the current — they are sitting in the slack pocket immediately behind a rock, a piling or a bar edge. Cast up-current and let your bait tumble naturally into that pocket with a slack line. A bait that swings across the current on a tight line looks wrong and gets ignored, no matter how lively it is.
Planning a trip to Naples/Marco Island?
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