FLORIDA GULF COAST FISHING MAP
Fishing Hot Spots
From Fort Myers and Boca Grande up through Sarasota, Tampa Bay, the Nature Coast and the Big Bend, then west along the Panhandle to Pensacola. Tap any star or dot on the map to see what it is and what to fish there.
📅 Florida Fishing Calendar — best months, closed seasons, bait & rigs →
More map layers
Fishing & access
Marine chart layers
Parks & rules
Safety: these are planning references. Use current official charts, weather and marine alerts and proper safety equipment before heading out.
Lake guides for this map
Month-by-month patterns, fish, ramps and rules for each water:
Fishing Hot Spots by area
Passes, bars, keys, rocks and wrecks with good fishing water. Tap one to fly to it on the map.
Boca Grande tarpon, Tampa Bay snook and Panhandle snapper
Boca Grande Pass is one of the most famous tarpon spots in the world, best from about May to July. Pine Island Sound, Charlotte Harbor, Sarasota and Tampa Bay are full of snook, redfish and speckled trout on the grass flats and mangrove edges, with tarpon and cobia along the beaches. North of Tampa, the Nature Coast is shallow and rocky, with gag grouper on the rocks a few miles out and redfish and trout from Crystal River to Cedar Key. The Big Bend and Apalachicola have miles of grass flats, and the Panhandle drops into deeper water faster, with red snapper, amberjack and grouper on wrecks and artificial reefs like the USS Oriskany off Pensacola.
Most refuges, state parks and aquatic preserves along this coast allow fishing, but a few small bird islands are closed. They show in red, and BigJoe does not put fishing spots in or next to them. Red snapper, gag grouper, snook and redfish have seasons, slot sizes and bag limits. You need a Florida saltwater fishing license. Check the FWC rules before you go.
BigJoe’s gear for Florida Gulf Coast
What BigJoe would bring to fish these waters.
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Map sources & checks
- Coverage
- Florida Gulf Coast. Mapped features come from public datasets and can be incomplete or out of date: a missing reef, ramp or wreck does not mean it is not there.
- Map data
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) — retrieved October 7, 2026
- World Database on Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC & IUCN), Protected Planet — retrieved October 7, 2026 (license: Protected Planet terms)
- Hot spots
- 86 hot spots, each with its own source (tap any star to see it): FWC artificial reef deployment records (45), OpenStreetMap named place (general position, not a pinpoint) (36), NOAA Fisheries closed-area boundary (3), Marine Regions gazetteer (2).
- Protected areas
- 63 protected areas from the official list above, drawn in dashed red. Fishing rules inside them are set by the managing agency; check with them before you fish.
- Chart layers (Charts button)
- GEBCO ocean depth and OpenSeaMap buoys, lights and markers, plus official NOAA nautical charts in U.S. waters. GEBCO and OpenSeaMap are useful references, not official navigation charts.
- Weather & tides
- See Weather & Tides for this area: NOAA/NWS forecasts, NOAA buoys and NOAA Tides & Currents, with Open-Meteo models where NOAA has no station.
- Dates
- This page last updated October 15, 2026. Each dataset keeps its own retrieval date, shown above.
⚠️ Planning reference only, not for navigation. Use current official charts, weather and marine alerts, and proper safety gear before heading out.
See something wrong or missing? Tell us and we will check it against the source.