Some of the best saltwater fishing is in Florida, with so many great fishing places it is hard to go wrong, and no wonder anglers travel to certain parts of Florida to do some great saltwater fishing. Like the Florida Keys, this is considered one of the top three spots for saltwater fishing in the world. Here the water is clear and the temperature is warm year round, meaning many fish do not have to travel south when the water gets to cold, unlike many spots that are up in northern Florida. Some other great spots you might want to check out if you are visiting for the first time are the Florida Everglades and the 10,000 islands. Me, in my personal experience have spent most of my life saltwater fishing Florida on the west coast, although I have made a couple of trips to the east coast off of Fort Lauderdale for some dolphin fishing. Where ever you are in Florida, if there is a coast there will be some good fishing, in my opinion the best saltwater fishing is from central Florida and down, due to the water temperature most always being warm.

If you are fishing off of a pier or on a beach, you will not need to purchase a saltwater fishing license, but if you are fishing from a boat you will definitely need to have one. They are cheaper for Florida residents than non residents, and there are certain types of game fish that require an additional license, or “tag”, some of these fish are snook (2 dollars), tarpon (50 dollars), and lobster (2 dollars). Now that you know that, let me go over some of the saltwater fish you want to try and catch while you are fishing in Florida.

Snook

These fish strike hard and they fight hard, the best way to catch snook is on a light to medium rod, and you will want to have a clear leader line also. Snook love to snack on live bait like shrimp and mullet, although they will hit artificial bait too, just not as often. There are four different types of snook, they are the common, tarpon, swordspine and fat snook. The common snook is the one that gets the biggest, and they can get up to 30 pounds, the Florida State record for the biggest is 44 pounds and 3 ounces. They have a little over 4 months of off season where you cannot keep them, this is the months of June, July and August, also, December 15^th through January 31^st, and yes, snook bite the best when they are not in season. They can be no less than 28” and no greater than 34” to keep them, the daily bag limit is 2 per person. Snook cannot be bought and they cannot be sold, so if you want to fill up your belly with some snook, then you better learn how to catch them. They can be found all over Florida, especially in the south, they like to hang around mangroves and docks, you can also find them around piers too, you will more than likely lose more than you land, they are terrific fighters when they are hooked up.

Mahi Mahi (Dolphin Fish)

Great tasting, hard fighters, well worth the effort it takes to catch one (or more). They can be found off shore, if you are in northern Florida you will need to go about 30-50 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico to land one, in the south however, especially the Florida Keys, they can be found 10 miles offshore and more. The farther you go out the better chance you have to land some with good size. You will need some trolling rods and some medium to large fishing tackle to get these bad boys in the boat. The main method to catch them is to troll, this way you can cover a lot of area. They preferred bait to use when fishing for dolphin is ballyhoo, along with some bright feathers on the hook, you want to troll anywhere from 8-12 knots, the more lines you have out the better, and you want the lines to be 100-200 feet back. 12 knots is not fast at all to a fish that can swim up to 40 miles an hour. When you are out trolling in the gulf or the Florida Keys, you want to look for seaweed lines, big floating boards, or a flock of birds diving, when you see either of these three things, there’s probably a school of dolphin nearby. There is no closed season for dolphin, no size limit, and the daily bag limit is 10 per day.

Snapper

There are several different species of snapper in Florida, I am not going to go over every single species for a small book would be written if I did. But they can be found everywhere in Florida, near docks, canal inlets, and miles offshore. All snapper have one thing in common, besides being great tasting fish to eat, they all like to hang around rocks and obstructions such as ship wrecks. They can be found in waters around Florida from the inshore, too the deep sea as far down as 300 feet. Red snapper and Mangrove snapper are the common ones that can be found fishing inshore. If you ever get a chance to fish the Florida Keys, you will see that it’s like snapper heaven there. There are no closed seasons for fishing snapper, both the Gulf coast and Atlantic coast have different bag and size limits for the red snapper, and the Vermilion snapper.

Some other great game fish that are fished in Florida are as follows, Mackerel, Marlin, Tarpon, Pompano Sheepshead, Striped Bass, Tripletail, Tunas, Wahoo, Sharks, Redfish, Permit, Seatrout, and of course the Barracuda, which is usually always caught when fishing for something else. If you do not have access to a boat to do some deep sea saltwater fishing, there are countless numbers of fishing charters all over Florida, no matter where you are at there is a captain there waiting to take you out and catch some fish.