Permit are a fantastic gamefish on light to medium tackle which cruise near the surface during the summer. They frequent the wrecks south of Marco Island and the Air Force towers out in the Gulf. In the past few years, due to the high price of fuel as well as a two fish per boat limit the Enterprise has only rarely targeted these fish. The preferred bait is a live crab floated over the wreck or up to the tower, but they will also hit a shrimp tipped jig. Excellent eating since they eat crabs, and you are what you eat.

Mangrove snapper are a target species, along with the groupers, and are caught much the same way, with bait on the bottom or a shrimp tipped jig dropped to the bottom. They frequent wrecks and reefs offshore, although smaller ones can be caught in the backwaters. As a rule of thumb, the deeper the water, the bigger the fish. The best mangrove snapper fishing is generally in forty or more feet of water. This equates to ten or so miles offshore of Marco Island and further. A six or eight hour trip is prefered for serious Mangrove fishing.

The ubiquitous lane snapper can be caught almost anywhere in the offshore waters. This pretty fish is a favorite of the kiddies, and the larger Lanes are great eating. They provide plenty of action when schooling up underneath the boat, although on Enterprise we don\'t bring back five gallon buckets of little Lane Snappers for eatings sake, but selectively take only the larger fish.

The King Mackerel are the hard hitting high speed superstars of Gulf of Mexico fishing. Should a big King hit your jig while you are innocently fishing their smaller cousins the Spanish Mackerel, he will certainly get your attention! All of Enterprises\' light reels are spooled with plenty of 15# braided line, around 250 yards, so if the big one hits we don\'t get spooled. Although sometimes we do! The bigger King Mackerel are not the greatest eating, with most of them simply released unharmed. Typically we will have lots of the much tastier Spanish in the icebox for a family dinner.

The Goliath Grouper is the largest of the grouper family, growing to 800 pounds plus! Thousand pounders are without a doubt out in the Gulf. They inhabit wrecks and structure, and are voracious predators,seemingly without any natural enemies once they reach a certain size. The Goliath used to be called the Jewfish, until during the Clinton years the name was changed for PC. Ironically, although the name Jewfish had nothing to do with the Jewish faith, the feds picked a name from the Old Testament as a replacement. Because some years ago the fish was being wiped out from Texas to the Carolinas by commercial fishermen, the Goliath was placed on the endangered species list. Marco Island and the Ten Thousand Islands were the last bastion of these giants, although they are now making a comeback elsewhere in the country. Enterprise charters include the option of catching one or more of these behemoths during the trip, although new federal law precludes boating them.