My family and I booked a 10 day boating vacation for the first half of August in Cape Coral. Someone sent me a screenshot, undated, where the person says “don’t waste your money or vacation” there because there is a bad red tide situation now??

Anyone in the area that can give me a status update?

I understand that there is a big movement of people upset about the dumping of phosphates into Tampa Bay at Piney Point. I don’t understand the real world implications of various algae levels; is this being exploited by people trying to reduce pollution dumping into the Gulf, or is the Gulf coast really in that bad of shape right now?

I have a $3.5k vacation riding on this. We were bringing our boat and were going to be on the water every day…

I’m at Sanibel Island right now, the water is fantastic.

Eh, I think you’ll be fine that far south. This is mainly because of the piney point incident and is mostly around the manatee river up through Tampa bay and to a lesser degree the intercostal in Pinellas. Tampa bay is pretty bad but I still see people out boating. Just did a offshore fishing trip last week out of Indian rocks. I didn’t see any dead fish and it didn’t smell bad as we made our way out by Clearwater. You could see patches of red tide close to the beach. The captain stopped 20 miles out for bait fish and  to turn on the live wells then we fished at 50 miles out.  50 miles out the water looked great I think you’ll be fine.

Yeah I'm just kind of worried about these areas in the intercoastal etc. I imagine that we will spend a lot of our time around Sanibel Island etc rather than the Caloosahatchee River, but I'm gonna be really disappointed if we end up having our entire stay in a stinky, dead area because of it. We were planning on doing a lot of fishing in the canal as well. I imagine the water in that area of the river is salt, if not very brackish?

Here is where we are staying:

Right now the water is fine. Red tide rolls through every now and then but recently water quality hasn't been that bad.

I had been hoping to roadtrip it out to Tampa bay area and fish the skyway bridge. I guess I oughtta wait?

Anybody in the area with any water quality info?
Searching the news hasn't been super helpful, as I'm unfamiliar with the area. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the reply. Not being familiar with the area, is that near the Skyway pier? It's over a 4 hour round trip from me, but I really want to check it out. Thanks.
Yesterday we wade fished the beach in Melbourne.  Got Spanish Mack's and sennets. Had a 5/6 foot shark swimming the trough at my feet. Cool stuff. ??

Blue green algae was found at 2 of the 3 public boat ramps that access the river.  Horton and Rosen parks.  Also at Jaycee Park at the end of Beach Pky, off Del Prado.
They are wanting to restart the "bubble curtain" by the Cape Coral Bridge to fend it off before it gets bad.  They are also looking to install 10 more curtains in the near future.

Don't know if it will be better or worse when you get here.  Right now, there's only a slight amount.

Red tide comes and goes.  It's not affecting this area, as of now.  Small amounts may affect you, if you have breathing problems.
Last time when it was bad, my co-worker and I got sick as shit from that and the algae.

@ddiggler i live on Sanibel and boat the area a good bit. The water quality right now in general is the best I’ve seen in a long time, but it looks like they’re starting to dump Lake O again. Cape Coral will never see “good” water. It will be brown and brackish. With that said, I haven’t seen any algae up that way yet. Water temps off Sanibel were 89 degrees yesterday, and higher inland. Conditions are certainly prime for the funky stuff to start.

If you want to boat or hit the beach where the good water is, watch the tides and pick your location. High tide will bring great water in past Sanibel and into the bay. An ebb will flush out all the brown water past the Sanibel lighthouse towards fort Myers beach. I pick my beaches and boating location based primarily on tides. I have some vehicles you can borrow with Sanibel resident stickers (which allows you to enjoy the private resident only beaches), and may be available to run you around in a boat. I can hook you up with fishing charters or anything else you might need in the area.

Dang!
There's that Fox hospitality!
Hope you are doing well, bud!

Wow, thanks! I was told about some nice spots up along Sanibel that we can get to by boat, we'll be checking them out for sure. Also looking forward to trying to get the kids onto some sharks, fishing under the causeway near the island.

I just bought a new tablet yesterday so I can run Navionics on a bigger screen than my phone and was looking over the area last night. It looks like there is a LOT of skinny water between Sanibel and the mainland, that's for sure.