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Daily Beach Report |
| Fishing on the Florida Gulf
Coast not only has a long and colorful history, from the first native
Americans to today's modern angler equipped with the latest in fishing
gear and tackle, but is still one of the top activities drawing people
to Florida. Your choices are many for getting to the fish. Fishing is
year-round and can be done from the beach, wading in the surf or the bay
waters, from bridges, piers, jetties, passes, docks, canoes, kayaks, all
manner of boats and watercraft. I've even seen people fishing from an
inner tube, floating in calm waters. Don't forget deep-sea fishing.
Numerous charters leave the sheltered bays every day to venture into the
deeper waters for grouper and other large fish. What do you want to catch? Trout, redfish, grouper, snook, sharks, all kinds of snapper, mackerel, jacks, tarpon, flounder--Florida's Gulf waters produce them all in abundance. Check out the links below. The Florida Fishing Information site has some great Florida fish identification photos. |
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Links to Fishing on the Gulf Coast |
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| Florida Fishing Information | Good fishing information, mostly centered around the Venice area and Tampa/St. Pete. Fish identification photos pages. Fishing tips and reports. |
| Tide information | Find out what the tides will be at any Gulf Coast location, for any date, now or in the future. Very useful. |
| When I was a kid growing up in Bradenton, Florida, we
used to go fishing in the Manatee River. We fished in the part of the
river that was close to the Gulf, so it was salt water. My aunt Mona, who
lived in Palmetto, used to take us kids down to the Palmetto side of the
Green Bridge. At that time (mid 1960's) there was a small wooden boathouse
on the banks of the river, and a rickety wooden dock that led to a
burned out restaurant at the end of the dock. We would get there just
after sunrise and take our little buckets down to the Australian pine
roots that stuck out into the water. The roots were covered with snails
that we would collect for bait. Then we'd walk out onto the dock. It was dead quiet out there except for the sound of mullet jumping. We would crush a snail with a rock and bait our hooks. We fished right under the dock in fairly shallow water and mostly all we caught were pinfish and grunts. But for little kids it was great fun! And if the fish weren't biting, we'd chase fiddler crabs on shore. Sometimes other local boys would come out onto the dock with their fishing poles, but they were after blue crabs. They would lure the crabs to the shallow water under the dock by dragging their bait across the river bottom. Then when the crab got right underneath them, they would stick the end of their pole into the water and wrap their line around the crab until it was totally tangled up. I'd never seen anything like that before. Seemed like an awful lot of trouble to untangle that crab from all that fishing line. I tried it a couple of times, but never could seem to get the crab. Now there's a big modern marina in that spot, and tall condos across the street, and a new Green bridge. Dang progress! |