SOUTH FLORIDA & FLORIDA KEYS FISHING MAP
Fishing Hot Spots
Miami and Biscayne Bay down through the Keys to Key West, the Marquesas and the Dry Tortugas. Tap any star or dot on the map to see what it is, how deep it is and what to fish there.
📅 Florida Fishing Calendar — best months, closed seasons, bait & rigs →
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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 island
Reefs, shoals, banks and channels named on the NOAA charts. Tap one to fly to it on the map.
The reef line, the bridges and the Gulf Stream
A line of coral reefs runs along the Atlantic side of the Keys a few miles offshore, from Carysfort and Molasses in the Upper Keys to Sombrero, Looe Key and Sand Key off Key West. Along the reef you find snappers, groupers, grunts, barracuda and jacks, and just outside it the Gulf Stream brings sailfish, mahi-mahi, wahoo, tuna and kingfish close to shore. The bridges and channels between the Keys, like Channel Five, Long Key, the Seven Mile Bridge and Bahia Honda, are famous for tarpon in spring, plus snook and mangrove snapper. On the Gulf side the shallow flats hold bonefish, permit and tarpon, and the Dry Tortugas and the Marquesas are a run worth making for big snappers and groupers. Dozens of charted wrecks and artificial reefs from Miami to Key West hold fish all year.
The core of many reefs, like Molasses, French, Carysfort, Alligator, Sombrero and Looe Key, are Sanctuary Preservation Areas where fishing is not allowed, and the Tortugas Ecological Reserve and Western Sambo are no-take too. They show in red on the map, and fishing spots are kept out of them.
BigJoe’s gear for South Florida & the Keys
What BigJoe would bring to fish these waters.
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Map sources & checks
- Coverage
- South Florida & the Keys. Mapped features come from public datasets and can be incomplete or out of date: a missing reef, ramp or wreck does not mean it is not there.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
- NOAA Office of Coast Survey — ENC Direct to GIS (harbour & coastal bands) — retrieved October 7, 2026 (license: U.S. public domain)
- U.S. Coast Guard Light List, Volume III (7th District), edition of 2026-09-30 (license: U.S. public domain)
- NOAA National Data Buoy Center active stations (CARICOOS, NOS, NERRS) — retrieved October 7, 2026 (license: U.S. public domain)
- GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names (IHO-IOC) via Marine Regions — retrieved October 7, 2026 (license: CC BY)
- NOAA Marine Protected Areas Inventory 2023-2024 (license: U.S. public domain)
- 50 CFR 622.439 (eCFR, current as of 2026-09-30) (license: U.S. public domain)
- Hot spots
- 95 hot spots, each with its own source (tap any star to see it): FWC artificial reef deployment records (50), NOAA nautical chart name (42), Published GPS (3).
- Protected areas
- 94 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.