Sarasota fishing

Sarasota's fishing runs from the grass flats of Sarasota Bay to boxcar reefs 30 miles out in the Gulf. This guide splits it the way you fish it: inside the barrier islands, along the Gulf beaches and reefs out to 20 nautical miles, and offshore beyond that.

Inshore is the Sarasota Bay system, a chain of shallow lagoons behind the barrier islands: Palma Sola Bay and Anna Maria Sound, Sarasota Bay proper, Roberts Bay, Little Sarasota Bay and Blackburn Bay, about 52 square miles in all, plus the bays inside Venice Inlet. The Gulf flows in and out through Longboat Pass, New Pass, Big Sarasota Pass, Venice Inlet and Midnight Pass, which had been closed since 1983 until the 2024 hurricanes opened it again. Sarasota Bay proper is the clearest of the bays, with big seagrass meadows around Long Bar Point, along the north shore between New College and Cortez, and on the shoals by New Pass and Longboat Pass: home water for trout and redfish. Snook gather at the passes and beaches in summer and spend the winter up the creeks and canals, such as Phillippi Creek, the bay's biggest.

Nearshore is the Gulf off Anna Maria, Longboat, Lido, Siesta and Casey keys and Venice, out to about 20 nautical miles. The bottom is mostly sand that deepens slowly, so the reefs make the fishing: the Silvertooth complex in 25 to 33 feet about 2 nautical miles off Big Sarasota Pass, the M-series reefs about 4 to 14 nautical miles out in about 38 to 65 feet, and Fallen Heroes Reef, built partly from retired Army tanks, in about 60 feet. It's mackerel, cobia and tarpon water in season, with grouper, snapper and sheepshead on the reefs, and the Venice Fishing Pier and the Venice Inlet jetties for anglers on foot.

Offshore starts about 20 nautical miles out and runs west to about 125, all of it federal water. Sarasota County's MD-1 and D-series reefs, in 78 to 110 feet 19 to 31 nautical miles out, and the wrecks NOAA charts west of Longboat Key are the structure to look for. The Florida Middle Grounds lie 83 to 104 nautical miles to the northwest, in the Tampa Bay offshore area, with two federal closed areas, Steamboat Lumps and The Edges, beyond them.

Where this guide starts and stops

In the north, the line is State Road 64 in Manatee County, the same line FWC uses between its Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay regions. All of Palma Sola Bay is in, because FWC puts the whole bay in its Sarasota Bay region. In the south, the bays end at the north end of the state's Lemon Bay Aquatic Preserve, and the Gulf at the south end of Caspersen Beach. So Venice Inlet, the Venice Fishing Pier and Caspersen Beach are in, while Lemon Bay and Manasota Key aren't covered yet.

FWC's own line between its Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor regions is a little farther north, at 27°04.727' N, about 0.4 mile north of the Venice Fishing Pier. The snook, redfish and trout rules change there: Venice Inlet is on the Sarasota Bay side, and the Venice pier and Caspersen Beach are on the Charlotte Harbor side. State waters end 9 nautical miles off this coast, and federal rules apply beyond.

The National Weather Service has no separate forecast for Sarasota Bay. The bays and the Gulf out to 20 nautical miles share coastal zone GMZ853, except Palma Sola Bay and the bottom of Anna Maria Sound, which are in the Tampa Bay zone, GMZ830. Zone GMZ873 covers 20 to 60 nautical miles, and past that it's the National Hurricane Center's offshore zone GMZ057.