Lemon Bay

Lemon Bay is a long, narrow, shallow estuary on Florida's Gulf coast. It lies in Sarasota and Charlotte counties, between Englewood and Manasota Key. Several creeks flow into it: Alligator, Forked, Gottfried, Ainger, Oyster and Buck. The bay drains through the inlets at Venice, Stump Pass, Gasparilla Pass and Charlotte Harbor. Before the Intracoastal Waterway was cut at Venice, Alligator Creek was the headwaters of the northern bay. The Lemon Bay Aquatic Preserve was established in July 1986. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection lists it at 7,227 acres and manages it as part of the Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserves system. The bay is an Outstanding Florida Water, with seagrass beds, oyster bars and mangrove islands that birds use as rookeries.

The preserve has no facilities of its own. Access is through county parks and ramps. Sarasota County Parks and Recreation runs the Indian Mound Park boat ramp at 210 Winson Avenue in Englewood. In a 2011 state survey it was a paved four-lane ramp with docks and no fee. Indian Mound Park also has a paddlecraft launch. Other carry-in launches on the Sarasota County side are at Lemon Bay Park, Cherokee Street County Park, and the north and south kayak accesses at Blind Pass Beach Park. Lemon Bay Park is a 210-acre county park with 1.7 miles of shoreline on the bay. In Charlotte County, the state also lists county ramps at Ainger Creek Park and Placida Park. Water is shallow outside the marked channels. Most of the bay is a slow-speed zone outside the Intracoastal Waterway.

The state notes that the bay was used by Native Americans and has a history of European villages and shipwrecks. Shellfish harvesting is conditionally approved in parts of the western half of the bay and banned elsewhere.