Anna Maria Island anglers must be be selective on their choice of days to fish as variables — wind, cold fronts and red tide are leaving small windows of opportunity to find success on the water.
Finding any consistency in a bite is challenging. Conditions can change in two-three days, causing fish to relocate and sending anglers on the hunt again.
To keep positive, let’s talk about the better days, when the tides are good and the fish are behaving.
On warmer, less windy days, catch-and-release snook fishing is quite good, which brings a promising outlook to mind for anglers anticipating the springtime bite. The snook are venturing out of their wintertime haunts and onto shallow grass flats to forage on shrimp, crabs and bait fish.
On the warmest days, the snook have been aggressive, blasting baits on the surface with some airborne shows in the process. Spotted seatrout are following suit, invading many of the grass flats from Miguel Bay south to Sarasota Bay. They also feed on most anything that crosses their path when conditions are right. Swift tides, warm weather and slightly clear water add up to the perfect recipe for the fish to get right and be on the feed.
Fishing along the beaches also is red hot for trout right now, although a brief interruption of red tide shut down the bite, leaving surf anglers to reroute to a different beach or try fishing in the bays.
As for redfish, many are being found while targeting snook on shallow grass flats, especially where oyster bars or mangroves exist. Solitary schools of reds also are being found around rocks and docks, providing sizzling action for anglers lucky enough to discover them.
So, as you can see, fishing between the fronts can be entertaining as long as you have the time and patience to pick your days according to what Mother Nature offers.
And just think, as we progress out of winter into spring, the fronts will become less frequent and we’ll have consistently good fishing again.
On my Just Reel charters, I’ve been fishing throughout the good and the bad days but that’s the nature of my business.
On the good days, I was inclined to keep my clients on the water past their scheduled charter time. The bite was so good I couldn’t bring myself to pull anchor and call it quits.
Catch-and-release snook action was nothing short of superb — some trips resulting in 20-30 snook hookups in a morning session. And, to top it off, having a mix of redfish and big trout made for days to be remembered by myself and my clients.
On those harder days during cold fronts, I’ve been managing to put a bite together, although it requires a lot of moves to catch a significant number of fish. On some days, I find myself traveling from one spot to another in 50-degree weather with a north wind blowing 20 mph, causing thoughts of other careers.
But that will never happen. After all, winter is almost over and springtime fishing is just around the corner.
Capt. Johnny Mattay says fishing is really good on the warm, calm days between the cold fronts. He says the catch-and-release snook are firing off when using live shiners as bait. The same applies for spotted seatrout and Mattay says he’s catching limits. Redfish also are on the list, with many hookups around rocks and docks.
Mattay says that once the winds lay down, he’s anticipating the offshore bite to be quite good and he’s anxious to get out there on the Gulf of Mexico to pull on some big fish.
Capt. David White is finding plenty of catch-and-release snook action during the warmer days. Casting live shiners over the grass flats is yielding good action on this most popular flats fish.
Redfish also are being caught on White’s charter trips, with many fish found along the beaches and among residential docks and mangrove shorelines.
Lastly, White is putting clients on schools of large jack crevalle, which, although they have no food value, are adequate in the fighting department as they wear out his client’s arms and keep them entertained.
Send high-resolution photos and fishing reports to fish@islander.org.
From Capt. Costello:
February has been a beautiful month here on Anna Maria with some warmer than usual water temperatures which has enabled us to get back to fishing with live green backs. Green backs are a small bait fish that have a huge impact on what our fish do down here on anna maria. When the water gets warm in the spring the snook, trout, and redfish swarm the grass flats in search for these bait fish. The warmer water temperatures have these fish feasting on these bait fish and has been some of the best shoreline fishing I’ve seen in a long time. There are tons of trout around with a great amount reaching the 20-27 inch range on my recent charters which is amazing to see. There has also been a great number of snook and redfish around anywhere from the manatee river down to the shorelines in Sarasota Bay. We have had the best luck in the afternoons once the water temperatures increase and use a light fluorocarbon leader and a 2/0 circle hook. With the recent cold front that came through this weekend fishing in the afternoons instead of the morning will be a great asset and it hasn’t slowed the fishing down much. We’ve had some strong wind the past couple of weeks that hasn’t allowed us to fish offshore as much as I’d like to around this time of the year, but when we’ve been able to get out there we have been catching hogfish and nice mangrove snapper on the hard bottom areas using a 1-ounce knocker rig and a big live shrimp or baitfish. It looks like the weather in early March will be outstanding and I’m excited for what’s to come as the spring migration should bring a great variety of hard-fighting fish into our areas.