Stand at the end of North Shore Drive at first light this week and you'll see it before you hear it. Water going dark and nervous near the seawall as a school of finger mullet pushes through, and somewhere behind them a snook or a jack crevalle working the edges. A few anglers are already down there, casting from the rocks instead of a railing, because the railing isn't there anymore. Behind them, past a chain-link fence, a scatter of wooden pilings sticks up out of the sand where the Rod & Reel Pier stood for 77 years.
That contrast is the whole story right now. The fish showed up on schedule. The pier they used to be caught from didn't.
Two Piers, Same Storms, Two Very Different Recoveries
Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit Anna Maria Island back to back in the fall of 2024, and both of the island's fishing piers took heavy damage. Two years later, they are recovering at completely different speeds, and the reason has almost nothing to do with how badly each one was hurt. It comes down to who was on the hook to pay for it.
The Anna Maria City Pier is a municipal asset. Local reports have pointed to a fall 2026 target for its reopening, backed by public funding through the city and county, a signed contractor, and a tenant already lined up for the pier house.
Rod & Reel is a private business. Owner Oliver Lemke bought the pier in November 2023, less than a year before the storms took it apart, and the building was uninsurable at the time. There was no insurance payout waiting and no institutional backer stepping in. The rebuild has been funded almost entirely through a GoFundMe campaign, which had raised $104,431 toward a $300,000 goal as of the most recent public update in May 2026, from nearly 1,000 individual donors.
Same storms. Same island. Two completely different clocks, because one recovery runs on a government budget and the other runs on however fast a crowdfunding page fills up.
Why a 77-Year-Old Pier Needs a Sign-Off From Tallahassee
The slow part of the Rod & Reel rebuild isn't the construction. It's the paperwork, and the paperwork is more specific than most people assume.
Lemke and Bradenton-based contractor Kingfish Coastal submitted a rebuild application to the city in September 2025. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection issued an exemption letter the following month that waived the usual water quality certification and cleared the project from needing separate U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permitting. That sounds like a green light, but the same letter denied something called a proprietary review, because the pier's sovereignty submerged lands lease doesn't automatically allow a rebuild when more than half of the original structure was destroyed. Rod & Reel lost well over that threshold. So before construction can restart, Lemke needs a separate authorization from the trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, the state body that manages Florida's submerged lands.
The city also had its own clock running. Local code requires a nonconforming structure like a pier to be rebuilt within a year of destruction unless the city grants an extension. Anna Maria approved one in October 2025, pushing the rebuild deadline out to October 23, 2027. Lemke said at the time that he expected permitting to wrap up within about six months, which would put completion somewhere around the spring of this year. As of the last public update, no permit approval had been announced.
None of this is a story about a slow contractor. It's a story about what happens when a privately owned, pre-storm structure runs into a state lands lease that was never written with a total loss in mind.
| Rod & Reel Pier | Anna Maria City Pier | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Private (Oliver Lemke) | Municipal |
| Funding source | GoFundMe campaign | Public/institutional funding |
| Funds raised | $104,431 of $300,000 goal (May 2026) | Fully funded |
| Permitting status | Awaiting state trust fund authorization | Contractor and tenant signed |
| Rebuild deadline | October 23, 2027 (city extension) | Fall 2026 target |
In the meantime, Lemke reopened the business on land, in a temporary indoor space, keeping the same staff and menu without the water underneath it. He's said part of the reason was practical and part of it was simply staying visible, telling Fox 13 Tampa Bay the move was partly "so the community won't forget about us."
What's Actually Biting While You Wait
If you fish this island, September and October are the two months you don't skip, pier or no pier.
Snook harvest reopened on September 1, 2026 across the Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay regions, which covers the water around Anna Maria Island. A few numbers worth keeping straight before you keep one:
- Slot limit is 28 to 33 inches total length
- Bag limit is one fish per person per day
- Keeping a snook requires a $10 annual snook stamp on top of a standard Florida saltwater license
- The season runs through November 30 in this region
Layer the mullet run on top of that and you get the best few weeks of shore fishing the island sees all year. The run builds hard through September and peaks somewhere in that mid-September to October window, dragging snook, jacks, and Spanish mackerel into the troughs right off the beach to feed. It's the one stretch of the calendar where you genuinely don't need a boat to catch something worth bragging about.
Where Locals Are Actually Fishing This Month
With Rod & Reel still fenced off, the island's fishing and post-fishing routine has shifted a few hundred yards in every direction rather than disappearing.
Bridge Street Pier down in Bradenton Beach has kept its regular hours through all of this and picks up a lot of the foot traffic that used to split between the two piers. Coquina Beach, at the island's south end, still has its long open shoreline and walking path, plus the Coquina Beach Market running on its usual schedule if you want to make a morning of it. Bean Point, up at the northern tip near where Rod & Reel sits, remains one of the quieter stretches of sand if you'd rather cast somewhere without a construction fence in your sightline. And a short drive across the bridge, the working docks in Cortez are still landing the same fresh catch they always have, storm recovery or not.
None of that replaces walking out over the water at Rod & Reel and ordering a plate of grouper while someone two tables over reels one in off the pilings below. But it's an honest picture of what's actually open right now, and it's more than enough to make this mullet run worth showing up for.
The Long View
Two years out from Helene and Milton, the island's recovery isn't one story with a single finish line. It's several stories moving at several speeds, and the difference usually comes down to who was paying and how that money was structured before the storm ever formed. The City Pier tells you what a fully funded public rebuild looks like on paper. Rod & Reel tells you what it looks like when one person is doing it a donation and a permit application at a time.
Either way, the fish don't care which pier is standing. They're running right now, same as they have every fall for longer than either pier has existed. Whether you're here to fish it or just to watch the water turn dark with bait at sunrise, that part of the island hasn't changed at all.
If you're thinking about what a season like this means for property near the water, or just want a local's read on how the island's recovery is shaping different pockets of it, Jessica Batten is always happy to talk through what she's seeing on the ground. Start Your Island Search whenever you're ready.
