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Heading out tomorrow to meet up with my brother-in-law to fish the Boca Grande area. I have told him I want a snook, a barracuda and a legal cobia as my top priorities. Tarpon would be number 4 on my list. Feels really odd to not take a boat and all my gear but he assures me he has everything we need (really makes me nervous to not be the captain on such a trip - hate leaving details to others). Oh well, gonna have a few cold ones and do some fishing. The wife is kinda dreading it because she was told "There is nothing else to do but fish". Sounds perfect to me! He loves chasing sharks, so I will probably do some of that too, but I can stay here and do that. I will just go with the flow.

Have a good trip doc. Sanibel is the shelling Capitol of Florida, so there is that. I fish down there at least once a year and it never disappoints. Good luck

Plenty of shopping on Sanibel/Captiva too.

I've fished the pass three times and don't care to ever do it again. Totally nerve-wracking experience with boats jockeying within inches of each other and the distinct possibility you could have a 100-pound ticked off tarpon coming aboard at any minute.

Beautiful backcountry fishing though around the islands, with laid-up tarpon, snook and reds all options. Plenty of cobia around but the cuda might be a stretch. Never know though. The snook can also be found along the beaches.

Good luck and have fun.

Beautiful place. Used to fish regularly back in the day, but haven't been in over 10 years due to the crowd of boats acting crazy. I was surprised the last time that there were no major collisions and no boats sunk from backing down too fast.

Got here and went straight out to fish. Great first day.


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He ate a crab. Might have worked the pod for 10 minutes and watched him eat. Long fight. Easy to get the hook out. Got lucky on the catch. . Barb was gone.


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Wow, 2 and 4 worked out for you ,good luck on 1 and 3

We avoided the pass the whole trip. They were stacked up there on Friday. Well, we did not totally avoid it. My tarpon took us on a long trip and we had hooked him on the beach, but he took us to the deep water. Got two lines hooked on it from another boat, but when we hollered for them to release their bails, they did so immediately and we unhooked them and never let mine get slack. Had another guy drive right over my line, thank goodness the fish had just gone deep or he would have cut us off. We tried waving him off and he just ignored us.

You were right about people being rude. Had two incidents. The first we followed a pod and it joined in to another a boat was working, so we kept on them. They guy told us to find our own ********* fish. We ignored him and stayed on ours when they split off. Hooked up and an hour later we wound up right back near him fighting the fish. He was still chasing the same pod. Must have ticked him off. The other, we found a pod that did pretty much the same thing, started 500 yards apart, until we were in near another boat on the beach (we were with a guide buddy of my BIL - I would have just found other fish). He tried to run our line over with his TM. They had brief words as well.

My BIL loves chasing big sharks so we ran out to a wreck and caught AJ, grouper and a big bull shark. He did not think I was worn out enough, so on the way in we hit another spot and caught a real nice cuda. Caught Bonita, King, Cero, AJ, Bull, Tarpon, Barracuda, various bottom fish. No cobes were sighted. Found snook and lots of big ones, but they did not want to eat. Really did not put much effort in to them, but that just gives me an excuse to see him again. Think I will take my boat to fish the better snook water. He has a Sea Hunt 24 and was just not ideal to hit the skinny water.

If anyone is thinking about making the trip, I would say it is pretty easy to find fish and to navigate. Lots of fish to chase and if you fish during the week on the beach instead of the pass you can stay out of the crazies.