Fishing on Anna Maria Island: Cortez Village, Inshore Waters, and the Gulf Beyond

Cortez: A Working Fishing Village, Not Just Another AMI Neighborhood

Cross the Cortez Bridge (SR 684) off the south end of Anna Maria Island and you land in Cortez — geographically right next door to Bradenton Beach, but historically and culturally its own place. Cortez was founded in the 1880s by settlers who came down from North Carolina's Core Sound fishing communities, and it has held on as one of the last working commercial fishing villages on Florida's Gulf Coast, at a time when most of the state's historic fish camps have been redeveloped into condos and marinas. That's a genuinely differentiated story most Anna Maria Island content skips entirely, usually lumping Cortez in as a generic "AMI fishing" bullet point rather than naming it as the separate, historic community it is.

The village's working-waterfront identity is documented in two concrete, visitable landmarks: the Florida Maritime Museum, which sits in Cortez and tells the story of the village's commercial fishing heritage, and the annual Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival, a long-running event built around the same net-fishing and boat-building traditions that founded the place. Between the museum, the festival, and the working fish houses still operating on the water, Cortez is worth a stop for its own sake — not just as a detour on the way to an AMI boat ramp.

What You Can Catch: Inshore, Nearshore, Offshore, and One Freshwater Option

Anna Maria Island's inshore waters — the bays, flats, and lagoons around the island and toward Cortez — hold redfish and spotted seatrout essentially year-round, with both species typically fishing best in spring and fall. Snook are a regular inshore target in the bays and lagoons as well. Tarpon are the island's signature inshore gamefish, generally targeted as catch-and-release, with the peak run running roughly May through August — the same stretch of the calendar when the island is busiest on the water generally.

Move out to nearshore and offshore Gulf water and the target list shifts to Spanish and king mackerel, snapper, grouper, cobia, and amberjack. Red snapper fishing is typically strongest in June, while grouper fishing tends to peak in the winter months. For anglers who'd rather skip the salt entirely, the nearby Manatee River offers a freshwater alternative, with bass, catfish, gar, bream, and crappie all present.

That said, species behavior and run timing shift year to year with water temperature, bait movement, and weather, and none of the above is a substitute for a current FWC species and season lookup before you go.

Florida Fishing License and FWC Regulations: Confirm Before You Go

Anyone fishing recreationally in Florida salt water between the ages of 16 and 65 needs a Florida saltwater fishing license, unless they're fishing aboard a licensed charter boat, in which case the captain's charter permit covers passengers. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) sets and enforces seasonal closures plus size and bag limits for the species above, and those rules are genuinely strict in places that matter — tarpon in particular carries specific harvest restrictions (most anglers practice catch-and-release entirely), and several grouper species are subject to seasonal closures on top of size and bag limits. These rules change, sometimes mid-season, so treat any species-specific number you read anywhere — including this page — as a starting point to verify with FWC directly, not a final answer.

Boat Ramps: Coquina Beach, Rebuilt and Renamed After the 2024 Storms

Coquina Beach's two Manatee County boat ramps — a north ramp and a south ramp — are the primary public boat-launch access on Anna Maria Island's south end. Both ramps were damaged and closed by the back-to-back 2024 hurricanes, Helene and Milton, and both had reopened by January 2, 2025. In May 2025, the county renamed the north ramp the Scott Moore Boat Ramp, honoring a local charter captain — a small but concrete, verifiable marker of the island's storm recovery that's worth knowing if you're trying to find the ramp by its new name on a map or in conversation with a local.

Marinas Around the Island

Boat owners and anglers working out of Anna Maria Island have four named marinas to choose from, one in each of the island's fishing-relevant communities: Loggerhead Marina-Cortez Village Marina in Cortez, Galati Yacht Basin in the town of Anna Maria, Waterline Marina Resort & Beach Club in Holmes Beach, and Bradenton Beach Marina in Bradenton Beach. Several additional marinas on the mainland side of the bay also serve the island's boating and fishing market, for anyone who can't find a slip on the island itself.

A Seasonal Overlap Worth Knowing: Peak Tarpon Season Meets Turtle Nesting Season

One genuine tension point worth flagging: Anna Maria Island's peak tarpon and general boating season, roughly May through August, sits entirely inside sea turtle nesting season, which runs May 1 through October 31 on this stretch of the Gulf Coast. That means the months anglers and boaters are most active on the water are the same months the island's beaches are under nesting-season protections — lighting restrictions near the beach, care around nesting areas, and general awareness that the busiest boating stretch of the year is also the most sensitive stretch of the year for the island's nesting shorebirds and sea turtles. It's not a reason to avoid fishing in summer, just a good-neighbor detail worth keeping in mind, especially for anyone launching or beaching a boat near dune and nesting areas during those months.