Anna Maria Island Fishing Report: Conquer the Winter Challenge with an Expert Charter
The winter time fishing on Anna Maria Island is without a doubt the hardest time of the year to catch fish with the cold temperatures, stiff northeast winds, and super low tides. This is why booking with an experienced, seasoned, local fishing charter company like AMI Excursions is so important. When you book with an experienced Anna Maria Island Fishing Charter company, the guide will take all of those tough variables and create a memorable fishing charter out of them!
What Should We Expect to Catch in the Winter?
What we catch in the wintertime is solely based on what the weather and the wind give us, so we will break up this blog into two separate sections: inshore and offshore.
Inshore: When the wind is blowing and it’s too rough to get offshore, we fish docks, rock piles, reefs in the bays, and different types of structure that hold sheepshead, mangrove snapper, black drum, and redfish. Those are the main species that we target, but every now and then we catch flounder, trout, jack crevalle, and more. We tend to look for docks with a hard rocky bottom around them or very deep docks close to passes where these fish tend to stick.
What bait works best Inshore in the wintertime?:
The best baits to use in the wintertime are live shrimp and live fiddler crabs. These baits are what we use on my charters, and they work best because of what we are targeting in the wintertime. Fiddler crabs hang around the dock pilings and concrete structures, so fishing with the bait that is present around the areas that you are fishing is always a great way to go. 95% of the year, we use a live bait fish of some sort, from pilchards to threadfin, but in the winter, they are not the way to go.
Offshore: On the offshore scene in the wintertime, we target hogfish, sheepshead, mangrove snapper, lots of different grouper species, porgys, and much more. When the wind is down and we are able to get offshore, it can be some of the most productive fishing of the year. We fish hard bottom areas at many depths and catch a ton of different fish. On some of my Anna Maria Island Fishing Charters, we catch 50-100 fish on a 4-hour offshore charter, making it super productive for all skill levels.
With all that being said, the winter fishing has been super productive, and we have had a ton of awesome trips down here in the great state of Florida. The weather should start to warm up by the day heading into February, and I can’t wait for what’s to come. If you are thinking about booking a fishing charter, please contact me as soon as you can, as my schedule is booking up by the day and dates are getting thin! One awesome thing that we provide people with here at AMI Excursions is the ability to get your family on a boat with other great local fishing guides in the area when I am booked up. We work with a great network of some of the best captains in the area to ensure that we can help any family experience a great fishing charter service, even if you call me at the last minute!
What species of fish will we be targeting in the months to come?
In the months to come, after the cold weather passes and the water starts to warm up, we will have some of the best inshore shallow water fishing of the year. We will be targeting snook, redfish, and seatrout on my Anna Maria Island fishing charters. February and March are some of my favorite times of the year to inshore fish, and I’m excited to get you guys out there.
How To Book Your Anna Maria Island Fishing Charter
The best way to book your fishing charter for 2026 is to give me a call or shoot me a text at 941-720-5374 and get that date that you want before it is no longer available. I have a lot of people calling and texting every day to get their dates on the books, and I don’t want anyone to miss out on some of the best fishing Anna Maria has to offer. I also don’t need a deposit; all you have to do is give me your name and phone number, and we are all set! I am looking forward to a busy season.
