Fishing Report: Venice/Englewood

Venice & Englewood, Florida: The nice crisp fall weather provided by the first cold front of the year provide great weather for a fishing Sunday. Although we were battling low tide conditions, we still managed to catch five fish in the group with my wife leading the group with three, I had two and my Dad had one.

Following our success last trip, we decided to go to the South Jetty again. We armed ourselves with 2-dozen live shrimp from the Crows Nest and hit the rocks. First shrimp in the water and my wife already had a fish. Her first was a Mangrove Snapper. But we were fighting a really fast current in the Jetty enhanced by the outgoing tide. So we decided to go the Gulf side of the rocks where nothing was happening except watching a Manatee playing in the water about thirty yards offshore.

We decided to hop around a bit and try some new locations. The first of these was the boat ramp at the Venice Train Depot. Despite some rather large Snook under the docks, there was nothing biting here so we moved on.

Next stop was the Intercoastal Waterway side of Manasota Beach. There is a great cove along the boardwalk here, but the low tide conditions kept it from being active.

From there, we went to Bay Heights Park, a little hidden park on the Charlotte/Sarasota County line. This location has a lot of potential with grass flats right along the coast, some deep holes and small pier. Once again, much of this was exposed due to low tide but in the area between the pier and the coast, I caught my first fish of the day, a small Crevalle Jack.

The last place we tried was the most active stop of the day. We finished the afternoon at the pier at Chadwick Park. Nestled alongside the Tom Adams Bridge, we figured this had to be a good spot and it was. We caught the three fish here in a span of only about thirty minutes. In addition to the three landed, there were plenty of other hits that did not hook. Here we caught a snapper, pigfish and the largest catch of the day, a mackerel.

Although we didn't research the tides before heading out, we still had a fun day on the water. I am looking forward to trying Bay Heights and Chadwick again during high tide.