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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.
To keep one it must measure from 18 to 27 inches, and the limit is one fish per person per day wherever keeping is allowed. The boat limit is four in the Panhandle, the Big Bend and the Northeast, and two from Tampa Bay south, around the Keys and up to the Martin and Palm Beach county line. The Indian River Lagoon, from Lytle Avenue in New Smyrna Beach down to that same county line, is catch and release only. That takes in Mosquito Lagoon at Canaveral National Seashore, which the Park Service says has gained national acclaim as a place to fly fish for red drum. Other redfish water with a public way in: the Apalachicola estuary in Franklin County, St. Marks refuge in Wakulla, the Steinhatchee River in Taylor, Charlotte Harbor, the Ten Thousand Islands in Collier and the Matanzas estuary in St. Johns County. Hook and line or a cast net only, with no spear, gig or snatch hook, and the fish stays whole until you are ashore. Redfish spawn from about August to December in the passes and inlets.
Brevard County. Canaveral National Seashore protects nearly 58,000 acres of barrier island, open lagoon, coastal hammock and pine flatwoods, including 24 miles of undeveloped beach that provides nesting ground for several thousand protected sea turtles.
Open the guide →Franklin County. The Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve covers close to 250,000 acres of river, marsh and bay along what Florida calls the Forgotten Coast, taking in the lower 52 miles of the Apalachicola River and the estuary it feeds.
Open the guide →Wakulla County. Turn off US 98 at Newport onto Lighthouse Road, County Road 59, and drive three miles to the visitor center at 1255 Lighthouse Road. It opens Monday through Friday from eight in the morning until four, and on weekends from ten until five, closed on federal holidays.
Open the guide →Taylor County. It rises in Mallory Swamp, just south of Mayo in Lafayette County, and drains a basin of 586 square miles before reaching the Gulf. For about a mile near the US 19 crossing the river goes underground and runs as a subterranean stream, which is ordinary behavior for a river cutting through limestone in this part of Florida and still surprises people who are watching for it.
Open the guide →Charlotte County. The state gives its size as 42,518 acres in one place and about 46,000 in another, and most of that is not walkable ground at all: it is mangrove shoreline, tidal creek and salt marsh held undeveloped to keep the estuary intact.
Open the guide →Collier County. It was established in 1996 under the Arizona-Florida Land Exchange Act of 1988, which transferred the land to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The name describes what it is: a scatter of mangrove islands, too many to count properly, running down the coast between Marco Island and Everglades City.
Open the guide →St. Johns County. The reserve was designated on August 19, 1999, and covers 76,760 acres across three estuaries, the Guana, the Tolomato and the Matanzas, along with the Atlantic shoreline in front of them.
Open the guide →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.
Read the answer →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.
It depends on which grouper and which coast, and the one with a short season is gag.
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