16-05-2025
Tarpon Lodge attracts gamefish that serious anglers have on their bucket list
Here at the northern end of Pine Island, it feels like you're a world away from the vibrant streets and nightlife of nearby Fort Myers. Especially if you're staying at the charming Tarpon Lodge, a legitimate Old Florida establishment that celebrates its 100th anniversary next year.
The lodge got its name from the bucket list gamefish that attracts anglers from around the world seeking to hook up with the silver king, the nickname given to the regal tarpon.
This time of year, the fish migrate through Pine Island Sound, which offers a panoramic view from the lodge's dining room, which attracts locals and visitors who come for the fresh red snapper and tripletail, and several of its 22 units.
Those who bring boats to the lodge's docks can visit neighboring Cabbage Key and eat at its Island Inn Restaurant, as well as South Seas Resort on Captiva Island, which has condos for rent, swimming pools, a nine-hole par-3 golf course, and several restaurants specializing in fresh seafood as it rebuilds in the wake of recent hurricane damage.
Along with tarpon, visitors can tangle inshore with snook, sea trout and redfish, or head out to the passes among the islands of Captiva, North Captiva and Boca Grande. There you will find tarpon rolling on the surface as they gulp air, as well as schools of permit, which are next on the bucket list. Permit look like silver platters and fight hard as they turn their wide bodies against the current.
Head a little farther west into the Gulf of Mexico and you can fish wrecks and rock piles for grouper, mangrove snapper, cobia, jacks and sharks, while sea turtles come to the surface on their way to area beaches to lay their eggs.
I fished the area with members of the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers, better known as AGLOW. The organization has members from 40 states, and several were eager to check off species from their personal fish lists.
Rob Shane, who lives in Washington, D.C., where he works for the American Sportfishing Association, a trade organization that is a leader in promoting recreational fishing as well as fisheries conservation, was after snook. While we headed across the sound to some mangrove islands that captain Bill Hammond of Endless Summer Charters had grown up fishing, Shane talked about issues that affect Florida anglers.
Among them are shark interactions, i.e. sharks that eat fish before they can be reeled in. Solutions include studying the use of magnetic technology to deter sharks from going after hooked and released fish and allowing the killing of shark species that are thriving.
Another concern is NOAA's Amendment 59, which would ban bottom fishing for 55 species from Melbourne to the Georgia border for three months to protect red snapper, whose stocks are soaring. The amendment is based on unreliable data that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration itself estimated to be off by 30 to 40 percent.
After arriving at a tiny island that had been hammered by Hurricane Milton, Hammond instructed us to cast live pilchards on lightweight St. Croix spinning outfits to the island. Shane was soon hooked up to a whopper of a sea trout, a 26-incher.
At the next spot, Shane added a keeper redfish that Hammond released. At the next spot, a mangrove shoreline, Hammond pointed out that the water was far back in the trees and that's where the fish were. As the tide fell, the fish moved out and Shane was soon catching and releasing one snook after another by casting his bait to the edge of the mangroves, giving him an inshore grand slam.
The next day, Hammond and I went offshore with captain CJ LaFauci, who runs one of Hammond's three boats, and Cristian Simpkins of Wisconsin. After trying for tarpon, which rolled all around us but ignored our live crabs, we headed about 10 miles to a rockpile in the Gulf. LaFauci put out a chum bag and used scissors to cut chunks of frozen herring that he added to the chum slick.
First we free-lined live pilchards back to the fish in the slick, which produced mangrove snappers, jacks and blue runners. We switched to a bottom rig, with a hook above a weight that kept the rig on the bottom. The results were immediate, as we caught mangrove snappers, Simpkins landing a huge 21-incher, and a snook.
The best fish was yet to come. On the way back to Tarpon Lodge, LaFauci stopped by the permit grounds, where he could see schools of the fish just below the surface. Using a live crab, Simpkins soon hooked one of his bucket-list fish.
The permit made several long runs, ripping line off the reel spool, but Simpkins fought it expertly. After he got the fish close enough to the boat for LaFauci to net it, an out-of-breath Simpkins was all smiles as he held the fish of his lifetime.
