by Capt. Christina
Spring is one of the busiest times of the year here in Naples with everything being so seasonal as far as our tourism goes, we take advantage of the fast pace while we can. For fishing, April is one of the hottest times of the year as well. The weather is perfect, the water is a great temperature allowing for all kinds of fish catching. Artificial or live bait, they have both been working great and thankfully bait hasn’t been in short supply either. We have been tying more and more jigs by hand, using homemade bucktail and feathers. You never really know what’s going to work, so we try a little bit of everything. Lately, the dark colors have been the key and the snook have been fired up. Recently on a bait run we were throwing our nets off the beach. The waters were cloudy, so a blind cast was just an idea of where the fish were sitting in the waters. On the first cast of the net I got three 22” Snook. It was a total shock, but I quickly untangled them from the net and got them back into the water. What and unexpected sight!
Backwaters have been holding lots of small snook and some not so small tarpon. Using our chum dawg to throw some fresh baits into the spots, we got the fish in a frenzy. The tarpon started rolling and we must have ended up with 18-20 snook out of one spot. The biggest being 26” but still an awesome sight to see the big ones there as well. Mullet have been stacked in the mangroves and have been bringing the larger tarpon into the small backwater creeks. We must have seen 15 different tarpon in one spot, all feeding on the chum baits. It is always nice to see the fish coming back after the last few red tide stints, but it’s a good sign catching so many juvenile fish in one sitting. We are looking forward to the Southwest Spring Classic this month, with first place going to longest snook! See you out there!
Captain Christina
Artistic Angler Charters booking now. Call us at 239-601-3799 or email us at Artisticanglernaples@gmail.com. If you see us out there be sure to say hi and check us out on Instagram @artisticanglernaples.
