Despite recent hurricanes, Florida’s Fort Myers continues to offer Canadian anglers a tropical winter escape

It’s a pleasant 25°C, the sun is shining, and a gentle sea breeze sends ripples across the crystal blue water. And I’m fishing. On a boat. In February. Not only that, but my wife is also with me, and she just caught the first fish. All is right with the world for this winter-weary couple, and as you’ve surely already guessed, we’re definitely not back home in grey, wet and cold Ontario.

No, lucky us, we’re in southwest Florida, on the hunt for the catch of the day with Captain Bill Hammond aboard his 24-foot Sheaffer fishing boat. All around us are reminders of our new-found Gulf of Mexico paradise, from manatees and bottlenose dolphins swimming beside the boat to strutting pink flamingoes and diving brown pelicans.

And, of course, there’s the fish. In particular, we’re targeting spotted seatrout, casting out weighted jigs tipped with threadfin herring, suspended beneath popping corks. With Captain Bill’s instruction, Jackie and I quickly get the hang of the technique, occasionally giving the presentation a smart snap to get the attention of feeding trout.

Actually, trout is a bit of a misnomer, even though these fish have the approximate shape of our freshwater trout, and they’re often referred to as speckled trout, or specks. They’re also anadromous like steelhead, but spotted seatrout are actually members of the drum, or croaker, family. Whatever the case, they’re abundant and fun to catch.

As Captain Bill moves us along, checking out his myriad seatrout hot spots of sandy bottoms and seagrass beds, it’s not long before we’ve lost count of how many fish we’ve caught and released. That’s not at all surprising, given the Fort Myers area is renowned for its abundance of seatrout. Time your inshore charter just right over the winter and you can also get into black drum, jack crevalle, mangrove snapper, pompano, redfish, sheepshead, snook, tripletail and more.

This part of the Gulf is also famed for its springtime tarpon fishery, and Captain Bill is frequently on his cellphone checking with other charter captains as they keep tabs on whether the fabled sportfish have migrated into the area yet. Also keeping tabs are the organizers of the inaugural South Seas Tarpon Tournament, a fundraiser for families of fallen and disabled veterans and first responders, slated for mid-May out of nearby Captiva Island’s South Seas resort.

As it turns out, we’re a week or so too early for the start of the big spring tarpon run, but Jackie and I are happy just to be out on the water under the warm sun, catching fish and taking in the coastal culture, which included some so-called shelling and a big seafood lunch at the late Jimmy Buffet’s famed haunt on Cabbage Key (see “Shore things”). Like I said, all was right with the world. But that wasn’t the case just 17 months before our visit.