Longboat Key

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tsezan

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Joined
Jan 3, 2015
Messages
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Location
Louisville, KY
In Longboat for the week. I brought my crestliner 1462 with me for the first time. I've only ever kayaked here before. Launched from south Anna Maria yesterday and fished around a place I used to have some mangrove snapper luck. I caught 20 catfish no snapper. So what's biting this time of year and where are some decent boat ramps? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
More catfish yesterday around Anna Maria. Fished a reef south of the 789 bridge into Sarasota today. Caught a bunch of little white grunts and a grouper today. After reading about white grunts I'm kicking myself for not loading the cooler. Put a bunch of reefs in my GPS will try a new one tomorrow.
 
https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/saltwater/white-grunt/

oh yeah buddy !! we catch a lot over on the East Coast at Titusville
under the bridges. Very good eating !!

tight lines

oh, and :WELCOME: to Tin Boats.
Please complete your profile when you have time.
Knowing what part of the country you hail from helps
us give you more accurate information.
 
Ill definitely be keeping anymore grunts I catch. Got my profile filled in. My family has had a place on Longboat for years so I've been here quite a bit just never had access to a boat before. This trip I decided i was tired of wading and paddling kayaks. So I drug my little Crestliner down from Kentucky. I've been following this site for boat ideas for years and remembered some guys posting fishing reports from this area. Thought I'd see if anyone had some advice.
 
you might want to trailer up instead of running, but some of the smaller inlets on the south side of the Sunshine Skyway in the mangroves are excellent for holding red drum and sea trout. Just after daybreak on a running tide is your best bet - look for constrictions and places the water speeds up. Baitfish will concentrate, and so will the big guys.

Just take care not to leave any prop scars.
 
Yes I did. Nice fish. Weatherman ruined a perfectly good day of fishing today. They kept predicting bad storms all day that never showed. I spent some time in the mangrove swamp behind the house catching fiddlers crabs to use tomorrow.
 
kcsphil said:
you might want to trailer up instead of running, but some of the smaller inlets on the south side of the Sunshine Skyway in the mangroves are excellent for holding red drum and sea trout. Just after daybreak on a running tide is your best bet - look for constrictions and places the water speeds up. Baitfish will concentrate, and so will the big guys.

Just take care not to leave any prop scars.

I didn't catch this tip yesterday but thanks. I may try and sneak up there. The problem is they keep shutting down Ann maria bridge from Longboat for construction/repairs. So to go north i have to go way south into sarasota. Boat is hooked up right now just waiting for this storm to pass so I can try these crabs out on some bay reefs down south end of island. I hear you on the prop scars. This bay boating stuff is intimidating. You can run out of water in a hurry. I've just been trying to follow bigger boats and stay close to channels. I know from back home im good in very little water but I hate to push it.
 
The problem with a lot of those bigger boats in florida is they all seem to have jack plates on their outboards which raise the motors vertically. I used to run a 20ft Whaler with a jack plate - we could pull the motor up to just keep the intake under on a plane and run in less then a foot. Drop off, however, and you could go hard a ground in a hurry.
 
Yeah I know what you mean about those jack plate bay boats running in inches. My little 15 hp does have a shallow water setting on it that pretty much accomplishes same thing. I have been in just over a foot of water back home with no issue. Down here I've been trying to avoid that though. The fiddler crabs were a hit with the sheephead today. Got caught in a storm so hid out under the first small bridge between st armands and Sarasota. Fished the piers of the bridge with the crabs and caught several sheephead in the 16-20 inch range. Just about to chow down on some fish tacos. :D

Also anchor lock on my Minn kota riptide is where it's at. Tuck under bridge hit anchor button on remote and no more rain worries. Kept me nice and dry today.
 
Loaded the cooler with grunts today and just chowed down on grunt tacos. Sheephead tacos were better, but I'll never toss a grunt back again. Found a group of mangrove snappers around otter key that all came in short. And that ends my 7 day non-resident license. Put eight different species of fish in the boat in all. Good times.
 

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