Where I Take My Clients Fishing In Fort Myers: Location Breakdowns With Captain Jack

Pine Island is one of those places that doesn’t always make the headlines, but it should. It’s all about the laid-back vibe and sneaky-good fishing. The backwaters here are a maze of mangrove creeks and oyster-laced shorelines, which make perfect habitat for redfish and snook just about any time of year. What’s great about Pine Island is that even during busier tourist seasons, the waters stay relatively uncrowded.

In the cooler months, the deeper cuts and potholes hold solid numbers of sea trout and sheepshead. When spring rolls in, snook and juvenile tarpon start getting more active in the backcountry. By summer, the flats come alive with tailing reds and cruising snook, and the mangrove snapper bite turns on strong. It’s the kind of fishery where even the slower days produce a bend in the rod.

Now, Fort Myers Beach is the spot for clients who want to get into some serious action without running too far. It’s an easy meeting point, and within minutes, we’re into productive inshore and nearshore waters. The back bays and passes around the beach area are loaded with baitfish for most of the year, which means predators aren’t far behind.

In spring and early summer, this is prime tarpon territory. The beaches see huge schools pushing through, and even if you’re not targeting tarpon specifically, they have a way of showing up when you’re after something else. Snook love to hang around the bridge pilings and sandbar edges, especially in the warmer months. Fall and winter bring in waves of pompano, seatrout, and flounder, and we also get solid runs of Spanish mackerel and the occasional redfish school cruising the edges of the flats.

Sanibel Island is a gem, plain and simple. The island’s cleaner water, thanks to good tidal flow and less runoff, means sight fishing is a real possibility—especially for snook and redfish on the sandbars and mangrove shorelines. The beaches are another draw. During tarpon season, late spring into summer, you can hook into a silver king just a few yards from shore.

What makes Sanibel unique is how quickly the fishing can change depending on tide and time of day. The grass flats hold seatrout, ladyfish, and jacks, and in the summer months, we’ll drift over these areas with soft plastics or live pilchards to keep rods bent. It’s also a reliable spot for mangrove snapper and juvenile grouper around submerged structure. In the cooler months, the action shifts more to deepwater docks and channels where black drum and sheepshead stack up.

Cape Coral might not be the first place people think of when they imagine a fishing charter, but let me tell you—it holds its own. With all those canals feeding into the Caloosahatchee River and Matlacha Pass, there’s a ton of fishy real estate to work with. It’s a great place to explore when the winds kick up and we want to stay tucked in but still catch fish.

Snook and tarpon love the canal mouths and river edges, and during the fall mullet run, the bite can be explosive. The residential docks are home to mangrove snapper and sheepshead year-round, and we’ve even had surprise encounters with redfish and juvenile grouper while pitching baits along seawalls. It’s not the wildest-looking location, but the fish don’t seem to care—and the convenience is a bonus for guests staying nearby.

Each one of these spots—Pine Island, Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva, and Cape Coral—offers something unique, and part of the fun is deciding which one to fish based on the season, the weather, and the goals of the trip. Whether you’re chasing your first tarpon, looking to sight fish snook on clear flats, or just want steady action with your family, we’ve got the waters and the know-how to make it happen.

At Jackpot Fishing Charters & EcoTours, every trip is customized to the bite and the guest. And with so many productive locations at our fingertips, the hardest part is choosing where to start. Let’s share some water and get into some of the best fishing in Fort Myers!