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2 months ago | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases. This spring may be the best time to go flounder fishing around Florida in several years. It’s been four years since the FWC shut down harvest of these tasty flatfish during their annual spawning run from mid-October through November, giving all those escapees time to grow into quality table fish.
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Jan 21, 2025 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Sheepshead are not all that mysterious most of the time. Put a piece of fresh-cut shrimp in front of where a school is hanging around a piling and reel them up. But bigger sheeps, 3 pounds and up, are harder to find and harder to fool. And even the smaller keepers can get tough to coerce after they’ve been beat on by lots of anglers. But there are tricks to the trade that will nearly always produce.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases. Head ‘em off at the pass has always been good advice, and it applies to fishing along Florida’s coasts, too. The many passes that dot Florida’s coast are all spanned by bridges, and those structures are nearly always very fishy spots for anglers in search of anything from snook and reds to sheepshead and black drum. Even pompano. Here are 10 tips to get in on the bridge bite.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases. The top all-time snook lures are a moving target because newer, more effective lures are coming out every year, and just about every snooker who has been at it a few years has a different list. However, there are a number of general designs that should be in the arsenal of every angler who hopes to regularly hook up with linesiders.
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases. Wadefishing is perhaps the most enjoyable way to fish the flats in much of Florida for reds, seatrout and snook. It puts you down there where you can experience the environment almost the way the fish do, feel the bottom texture, the vegetation, the water temperature and current flow—and all of this helps catch more fish, too.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
gameandfishmag.com | Frank Sargeant
If you're a deer hunter who also enjoys bass fishing, consider a trip this fall to Scottsboro, the county seat of Jackson County, Alabama. That's where the Appalachian Mountains begin and thousands of acres of mostly public lands are inhabited by imposing whitetail deer. Meanwhile, the Tennessee River and Lake Guntersville offer superb fishing for largemouths of equally impressive size. A hunt I had here last fall during archery season on 67,000-acre Martin-Skyline WMA was typical.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
It ain’t as easy as it looks on Facebook. While Florida has plenty of monster snook these days—probably more than it has in decades due to the long closed seasons and the very tight slot limits allowing more giants to survive catch-and-release—it’s still no easy matter to catch a true giant.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Some people call it “strolling” because it’s too slow to be called “trolling”. But easing along very slowly prospecting for crappies is the very best way to find them when they are anywhere but on the banks spawning in late winter and early spring. The rest of the year, they’re most often schooled offshore, and finding them requires you to keep moving until you connect. Trolling speeds lower than walking speed—3 miles per hour—are usually most successful for finding crappies.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases. Lake Okeechobee spans some 467,000 acres. It’s nearly 30 miles across at the widest point, and almost all of the shoreline looks fishy. So where do you start? It’s sort of like eating that fabled elephant, go after it a bite at a time. If you spend all your time running from one remote spot to another, you’re not likely to have a good experience.
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Oct 7, 2024 | 
floridasportsman.com | Frank Sargeant
There can actually be too much of a good thing, and the Everglades is a classic example when it comes to finding fish. Just about everything looks good—thousands of acres of mangrove shoreline, endless winding rivers and creeks, white sand beaches and sweeping grass flats are all part of this vast ecosystem stretching across Florida’s southern tip. Oddly enough, though, there are a lot of areas where fish are scarce, or are available only seasonally, or on particular tide phases.
