SWFL Fishing Forecast for November, 2021

I would like to start of by extending a warm welcome to our friends from the north. Hopefully this winter will be a mild tropical winter that Florida is known for. The mornings have been nice and cool with warm sunny days. The cooler nights have started to move the fish around some. The biggest mover has been our snook. As we move closer to winter these guys will move closer to areas that have deep water access. Area’s on the flats that have deep creeks close by are good areas to locate feeding fish.

Our miles of residential canals are another great place to locate snook. When I look for fish in residential canals there are a couple different things that I look for. The main one being tide flow, good moving water is very important. The other is docks that have been around for sometime and are old. Oysters and barnacles are great hiding places for smaller prey such as crabs and small bait fish. Those same oyster and barnacles can be your enemy when fishing these docks. I recommend using no smaller than 30# leader, and a nice tight drag.

Another fishery that will begin to pick up, is our sea trout fishery. The cooler water gets these starting to school up. They are not as affected by the cooler water as snook. However they will move to areas with deep water if we have some major cold fronts. Our local flats with a mixture of sand grass has been holding good numbers of trout.

The past couple weeks have been very productive on our charters. We have been managing to put well over 50 fish to the boat on our half day charters. Our main bite has been trout and snook, with a few reds mixed in. The trout we have been catching have been pretty nice. We have not had many fish under 15 inches, and a lot of them over 20 inches. On a recent charter we sat in a spot and caught nice trout for over an hour. We then moved on and caught some nice snook, and ended the morning on a 30 inch redfish. The snook have been mostly schooling fish in the 18-22 inch range. We are starting to catch a few fish in the 30’s. This cooler weather should help get the big girls fired up. They will be looking to put on some fat before winter. As long as we don’t have any crazy changes in our weather patterns our fishing should keep getting better for the next few weeks.

If you would like to experience some of Southwest Florida’s finest fishing give me a call or send me an email. All of our trips are private and customized to fit you and your parties needs.

You can also follow me on Twitter @ backbayxtremes for daily and weekly updates.

Captain Dave Stephens * (941) 916-5769 * Back Bay Xtremes * PO Box 510746, Punta Gorda FL 33951

Flats Fishing Charters for Charlotte Harbour, Punta Gorda, Florida