Ok, first a disclaimer. I am just a casual fisherman. I love to fish and love to learn new ways to fish, but am not a professional or anything close. I also don’t pretend to be an expert on how to fish Anna Maria Island (AMI). I have only been there a few times. But in preparation for those trips I had a hard time finding useful sites for information on fishing AMI. So this blog is just about the experience I had at the times I was there. I’m sure there are many other ways to fish AMI.
The first year I was there for vacation, it was really calm the whole week. The water was really clear. Much of the success I had was either early in the morning (sunrise plus an hour or two) or an hour or so before sunset. I’m guessing the low light countered the clear water at these times.
I had a lot of success with top water plugs at first light, but be warned, the birds can be a problem with these types of lures (at least in the part of AMI I was in). You have to constantly watch for them because they will try and take your lure and this makes it difficult to fish. But if you’re there at first light, the birds aren’t up flying as much as they are 30 minutes later.
I also had some success with jigs and Gotcha plugs. I found that the 5/8 ounce gotcha plugs could still be worked pretty well off the beach. Anything heavier was tough to use. Also, the gotcha plugs with orange heads seemed to work better than others.
Outside of early morning and evening, I fished, but had little success. Time was better used being spent with the family or doing something else. I did catch an occasional flounder during the day (used cut bait with a small weight and drug it slowly across the bottom), but for the most part I was feeding the bait fish.
Under calm conditions, in my limited experience, it’s important to look for the potholes. You can usually see these as they appear darker than the rest of the water around them. So during the day take a look at where the potholes are and fish around those early and late.
My second significant trip, the conditions were quite different. The early part of the week was calm which again, I didn’t have much success except for early and late. However, midway through the week the ocean got rougher and the waves bigger (in this case due to a tropical storm). This seemed to actually improve the fishing for me.
I had a lot of success with jigs under these conditions. I would typically cast the jig diagonal from the shore (even right parallel with the shore), out past the breakers, and would get the majority of bites fairly close to shore. I caught Snook, Trout and even hooked into a Tarpon (although my gear was not prepared for this and he snapped me off). I found that the electric chicken colored jigs worked really well, but had success with other colors as well.
I tried all sorts of live and dead bait and to be honest, didn’t have that much success with it. That could just be inexperience on my part. Caught a big sting ray once and hooked into what I think was a big Tarpon on live bait once, but outside of that, not much success at all.
Keep in mind, I was fishing the north end of AMI, almost at the tip. It may be and probably is different further south on the island. Again, this is just my experience.
I fished Rod and Reel Pier a couple times and caught stuff each time, but no keepers. It’s best to take your own bait there if you can. One time all they had was frozen shrimp, and another they had all sorts of bait. So you never know. I found that in the evenings the pier tends to fill up with lots of kids which I’ll leave up to you whether or not that’s good or bad.
AMI is a beautiful place and I plan to go back many times. Keep it beautiful by cleaning up after yourself and being respectful to the nature that calls AMI home.
