Brian Sanders

Captain Brian Sanders is a third generation Floridian who has guided the Everglades, the 10,000 Islands, and the Gulf of Mexico out of Chokoloskee since 1998. He is known for an uncanny ability to find fish and for reading the backcountry tides, targeting snook, redfish, and tarpon inshore and cobia, permit, and kingfish in the Gulf. In his In The Spread videos, Sanders teaches live bait tactics for Chokoloskee snook, bait selection, tackle, and boat positioning, plus baits and lures for cobia around structure.

Instructor's videos

Brian Sanders was born to guide the Everglades. A third generation Floridian who grew up hunting and fishing the backcountry with his family, Sanders has been running charters out of Chokoloskee Island since 1998, and in more than twenty-five years on this water he has come to know the 10,000 Islands and the Gulf of Mexico as well as anyone alive. His regulars will tell you as much. Many of them are guides themselves who book Sanders when they want to learn something or simply fish with the best.

What separates him is an almost uncanny sense for finding fish, even on the days the tide and weather are against him. The Everglades backcountry is a maze of mangrove islands, narrow passes, oyster bars, and creek mouths, and the fishing lives and dies on tidal movement. Sanders reads that water instinctively, knowing which creek fires on the incoming and which one turns on when the tide falls and bait flushes out the mouth.

His range is what makes him such a complete teacher. Inshore, he chases snook, redfish, tarpon, and sea trout through the backcountry, and he is a genuine authority on backcountry snook, from bait selection to pulling a big fish out of the mangrove roots before it breaks you off. Push out into the Gulf and the game changes to cobia, permit, kingfish, and tripletail around wrecks, structure, and open water. He is also a seasoned tournament angler, having fished competitively for over twenty years from the Gulf to the Atlantic, which sharpened his eye for detail and his ability to produce under pressure.

Through all of it, Sanders stays down to earth, generous with what he knows, and genuinely happy to put people on fish.

In his In The Spread videos, Sanders breaks down live bait tactics for Chokoloskee snook, including bait selection, reading the tides, tackle for structure, and boat positioning, along with baits and lures for cobia around wrecks and pilings. If you want to learn the Everglades and the 10,000 Islands, learn them from the man who knows that water best.