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Snook sit against structure in moving water, so the inlets, bridges, jetties and passes are where you find them.
Sebastian Inlet in Brevard County and Fort Pierce Inlet in St Lucie are the two Atlantic names. On the Gulf side, Boca Grande and Blind Pass in Lee County, Turner Beach at the Captiva end, and the Naples Pier in Collier County, though the pier itself is closed for a rebuild that began in January 2026 and is expected to take about 18 months. Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County fishes well on a night tide. Lovers Key in Lee County holds them in the back bay. Snook have a closed season that differs between the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and it changes after a cold winter or a red tide, so check the current rule before you keep one.
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 →Lee County. Blind Pass Beach Park, 6497 Sanibel Captiva Road, at the northwest tip of Sanibel where the island meets Captiva across Blind Pass. The City of Sanibel runs it. The fast tides between the islands keep bringing shells in, which makes it one of the best shelling spots on Sanibel, and people fish from the shore and near the jetty for snook and redfish.
Open the guide →Lee County. At 17200 Captiva Drive, just past the bridge onto Captiva, on the Captiva side of Blind Pass. Soft sand and wide water views, and it is known for the sunset.
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 →Lee County. The four are Lovers Key, Black Island, Inner Key and Long Key, and until 1965 the first of them could only be reached by boat, which is where the name came from.
Open the guide →Florida calls itself the fishing capital of the world and it has the license sales to argue it.
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.
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