Everglades National Park/ Marco Island Trip

*Disclaimer. I am a terrible speller and I have zero intention on fixing that right in this moment. My brain is a washing machine of randomness so when I get on a role typing I don’t know what will come out.

Thanks, Ryan

A few weeks ago my childhood friend Chris and I headed south to meet up with a good friend of mine Capt. Derill Lee. Derill is the owner/operator of Lee Guide Service out of Naples, FL. Derill spends most of his time in the backcountry of the ENP searching for Snook/Tarpon/Redfish.

Fast forward 9hrs worth of a drive from Charleston to Marco Island where we were stayed for the week. We land at our Airbnb around 10pm only to find the owner of the property gave me a 3 digit lock box code to a 4 digit box…. yea that was fun trying to call/text a guy who I’ve never met late at night on a Wednesday.

Once we finally got into our house we quickly walked out to our patio to check out the dock lights. Lucky us, they were LOADED with… well, my first thought was Sail Cats because that’s all that seems to be around dock lights down there, but to my surprise the lights were loaded with Speckled Sea Trout. We had to be up at 5am to meet Derill at Goodland in the morning, so naturally we stayed up until 3am catching a million trout and snook off the dock lights. Fish + Beers = Life

Day 1:

I’m going to keep the day recaps somewhat short, mostly because I can’t remember what all we did.

Nevertheless, we set out every day around 6am from the ramp on Goodland Island (5 min south of Marco Island). Derill had his sights set on catching that 40 inch snook. spoiler alert… didn’t happen …we just couldn’t find the bit girls this trip. We did however, find the snook, tarpon and redfish.

Back to the story. Day 1. I think we came up dry the first day. Derill, if you read this my bad, you know I have a shit memory. I know we saw fish all day but I think they were just spooky.

Day 2:

Derill took us straight to the juvenile Tarpon. Why you ask? Because we are children and Derill was like the dad giving his kid a candy bar so we would be quiet for a few minutes. I honestly think Chris and I could’ve sat there for the next few days and caught juvenile tarpon non stop and we would’ve been perfectly happy. Again, we are children. After a morning of absolutely crushing these tarpon we figured it was time to look for some reds and snook. We worked the banks and struggled to connect. We did however see a Bobcat walking on some mangrove vines in a cove which was pretty cool. My ADD was very happy about that particular event.

Day 3:

Last day. I’m 1000% sure my recollection of this trip is so off but moral of this day’s story, my spin fishing game was on fire. Add the DOA Shrimp Galaxy Glitter and you get two “Everglades Slams,” that would be a redfish/snook/tarpon in one day. Yep that’s right, I put the fly rod down. Why? well because I don’t always go for the gold. Someone has to get the bronze medal baby. All jokes aside, the last day was awesome. We caught a ton of fish. We saw them in every fashion possible. Tailing, cruising, and just chilling. Derill worked his butt off to get us on some fish and he most certainly did that. It was also nice to spend 3 days in his new Chittum Mangrove. That boat is a machine. Super skinny and poles like a dream.

Another fun note to this mediocre fish story is I completely drowned my Sony A7r iii in some bitter cold gulf coast water. So with that awesomeness, all of these photos are from the fancy Iphone X.

I hope you enjoyed this story. I am considering a recap of my Andros trip from a few weeks ago. If you think I should give me a comment on my last post or something so I at least know one person cares.

Thanks to Captain Derill Lee for the great couple of days on the water. His info is below and thanks to Chris for providing all the fluffy goodness (Flies) for the trip.

Captain Derill Lee - https://www.leeguideco.com/

239 Flies - https://239flies.com

Signing out from my wife’s computer - Capt. Galaxy Glitter Ryan