Jacksonville Beach Pier
Duval County. The Jacksonville Beach Fishing Pier ran 1,300 feet into the Atlantic until October 2016, when Hurricane Matthew came up the coast as a category two storm and destroyed close to half of it.
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Florida calls itself the fishing capital of the world and it has the license sales to argue it.
What you want depends on how you intend to fish. From a pier, with no boat and usually no license: Jacksonville Beach, the Cocoa Beach Pier, Juno Beach, the Okaloosa Island Pier and the St Pete Pier; Naples Pier is closed for rebuilding. From the sand: the inlets at Sebastian, Fort Pierce and Matanzas. Offshore on a charter: Destin, Panama City, Pensacola, Stuart, Islamorada and Key West. For particular fish, tarpon means Boca Grande and Homosassa, snook means the inlets and the passes, and grouper and snapper mean the Gulf reefs. Freshwater largemouth bass is its own sport, on Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee chain.
Duval County. The Jacksonville Beach Fishing Pier ran 1,300 feet into the Atlantic until October 2016, when Hurricane Matthew came up the coast as a category two storm and destroyed close to half of it.
Open the guide →Brevard County. The Westgate Cocoa Beach Pier runs 800 feet out over the Atlantic and works as a small entertainment strip rather than a plain fishing pier, with restaurants and bars along its length, an arcade, gift shops and live music.
Open the guide →Palm Beach County. Guarded, and a beach that suits surfers and families at the same time. The Juno Beach Pier runs out from beside it.
Open the guide →Okaloosa County. The Okaloosa Island Pier is on Okaloosa County's parks list and is run by a leaseholder. It extends 1,270 feet into the Gulf of Mexico from 300 Pier Road, next to the Boardwalk, and is used for fishing and for walking out over the water.
Open the guide →Collier County. The sand at the foot of 12th Avenue South, where the Naples Pier stands. The pier is closed and being rebuilt: Hurricane Ian destroyed about 460 feet of it in 2022 and the city is replacing the whole structure, higher and on larger pilings, with construction that began in January 2026 and that the city expects to take about 18 months.
Open the guide →Pinellas County. St. Petersburg has put piers into Tampa Bay since the 1800s. The Million Dollar Pier opened on November 25, 1926, with 10,000 people on it and a Mediterranean Revival casino at the end.
Open the guide →Brevard County. $8 per vehicle, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at the southern end of the county. Two jetties reach into the Atlantic and the breaks off them - First Peak and Monster Hole - bring surfers from outside Florida.
Open the guide →St. Lucie County. A half mile of beach at 905 Shorewinds Drive, open 8 a.m. until sundown, 365 days a year. Entry is $6 a vehicle for up to eight people, $4 for a single occupant or a motorcycle and $2 on foot or by bicycle.
Open the guide →Lee County. Twenty-five public ways onto the water on Gasparilla Island, fourteen on the Gulf side and eleven on the bay. The Gulf accesses are at 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 17th and 19th Streets and at Banyan Street; not every one reaches the sand, and some are viewpoints over the Gulf rather than a way down to it.
Open the guide →Monroe County. At the ocean end of Duval Street, open sunrise to sunset, within walking distance of the shops and restaurants at the bottom of the street. The water is shallow and the Emma Carrero Cates Pier runs out from the sand.
Open the guide →Redfish, which the rules call red drum, are fished on both coasts all year, over seagrass, mud and sand bottoms, oyster bars and spring-fed creeks in the bays behind the beaches.
Speckled trout, spotted seatrout in the rules, live over sand bottoms and seagrass beds in coastal water around the whole state, and they spawn inshore from March to November.
Red snapper has two seasons in Florida, one for the Gulf and one for the Atlantic, and both are set again every year.
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