When can you catch redfish in Southwest Florida?

Year-round: No closed season in the Southwest and Charlotte Harbor regions. This is the fish that gives you a legal option any week of the year. September – November: The best of it. Bigger fish school up, water is still warm, and the flats fish well through the fall. December – February: Cooler water pushes fish onto dark bottom that warms fastest in the afternoon sun. Fish later in the day, not at dawn. March – August: Reliable on tide and structure. Summer afternoons get brutal — go early or go late.

Casting at the fish instead of ahead of it — does it matter for redfish?

Lead a moving red by six to ten feet and let it find the bait.

Fishing the middle of a flat — does it matter for redfish?

Edges produce: oyster bars, potholes, mangrove lines, drop-offs. Featureless bottom rarely does.

Keeping an oversized fish — does it matter for redfish?

Anything over 27" goes back. Big breeding reds are outside the slot and illegal to keep.

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Southwest Florida · Inshore

Redfish

Also called red drum, channel bass

Open year-round in Southwest Florida, catchable from shore, and the most forgiving target on this list.

Redfish harvest is open year-round in the Charlotte Harbor and Southwest regions covering Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties, with an 18"–27" slot and a limit of one per person and two per vessel. They feed on shallow flats, oyster bars and mangrove edges, which makes them the realistic target for anyone fishing without a boat.

Size and bag limits

Season: Open year-round (Charlotte Harbor & Southwest regions)
Slot limit: Not less than 18" or more than 27" total length
Bag limit: 1 fish per person per day
Vessel limit: 2 fish per vessel

Source

FWC: Red Drum (Redfish) — size, bag and season figures, retrieved August 3, 2026

Full regional table: SWFL season & regulation calendar.

Where

Where to find redfish in Lee, Collier & Charlotte

Oyster bars on a falling tide: Bars in Pine Island Sound and Estero Bay concentrate bait as water drains off them.
Mangrove edges at high water: Fish push right up into the roots when there is enough water to swim there, then pull out as it falls.
Sand potholes on grass flats: Light-coloured holes in dark grass show fish clearly and are the easiest sight-fishing in the region.
Cape Coral canal seawalls: Canal redfish sit tight to structure and around dock pilings, catchable on foot from a lot of the city.
Bunche Beach and San Carlos Bay flats: Wadeable, no boat required, and holds fish on the right tide.

Catchable from shore at Bunche Beach Preserve (San Carlos Bay), Cape Coral Yacht Club Fishing Pier, Ponce de Leon Park (Punta Gorda), Caxambas Park (Marco Island) — access, parking and pier details on our Southwest Florida shore spots page.

When

When they bite

Fish move with water temperature, not the calendar. These windows are guidance, and a cold front or a warm winter shifts every one of them.

Year-round: No closed season in the Southwest and Charlotte Harbor regions. This is the fish that gives you a legal option any week of the year.
September – November: The best of it. Bigger fish school up, water is still warm, and the flats fish well through the fall.
December – February: Cooler water pushes fish onto dark bottom that warms fastest in the afternoon sun. Fish later in the day, not at dawn.
March – August: Reliable on tide and structure. Summer afternoons get brutal — go early or go late.

Tackle & bait

What to fish

Tackle

7' medium spinning rod with a 2500–3000 size reel is plenty
10–15 lb braid with 20–30 lb fluorocarbon leader
Weedless rigging matters more than it does for most species — these fish live in oysters and roots

Baits and lures

Live or cut shrimp on a jighead or under a popping cork
Cut ladyfish or mullet on the bottom near a bar
Gold spoon — old-fashioned, still works, and covers water fast
Soft plastic shrimp imitations worked slowly across potholes

Rig it with the knots we actually use — leader-to-braid and hook knots, with text steps.

How

How to fish for redfish

Tide beats time of day. A falling tide pulling water off an oyster bar or out of the mangroves hands feeding fish a conveyor belt of bait, and that is when a red is easiest to fool. Pick the bar or the shoreline first, then work out which hours of the day the tide is actually doing that.

Redfish feed nose-down with their tail up in shallow water, which is why "tailing" is the thing everyone looks for. If you can see tails, get well ahead of the fish and let it swim to the bait — a cast that lands on top of one clears the flat instantly.

In the canals, treat every dock piling and seawall corner as a spot rather than fishing the open middle. Fish sit on the shade line and the structure, and a bait that swims past within a foot of it gets eaten far more often than one that does not.

Common questions

What people get wrong

Casting at the fish instead of ahead of it: Lead a moving red by six to ten feet and let it find the bait.
Fishing the middle of a flat: Edges produce: oyster bars, potholes, mangrove lines, drop-offs. Featureless bottom rarely does.
Keeping an oversized fish: Anything over 27" goes back. Big breeding reds are outside the slot and illegal to keep.
Ignoring the vessel limit: Two fish per vessel, not two per angler. Four people on one boat still means two fish total.

Regulation figures retrieved from FWC: Red Drum (Redfish) on August 3, 2026. Everything else on this page is fishing guidance, not a sourced claim, and is written as such: no catch statistics, no invented studies. Seasons and limits change — verify at myfwc.com before you keep a fish.