Also known as Pompano, Common Pompano, Carolina Pompano, Sand Pompano, Pomp. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Florida Pompano — The surf's most prized jack, eaten flea by flea down the trough. Also called Pompano, Common Pompano, Carolina Pompano, Sand Pompano, Pomp.
Florida Pompano is also known as: Pompano, Common Pompano, Carolina Pompano, Sand Pompano, Pomp. The surf's most prized jack, eaten flea by flea down the trough.
Regional names can confuse anglers and cause misidentification. The table of common names below covers the most-used alternatives across Australia, New Zealand and the US:
Key to correct identification: check the regulations-authority species sheet for your state or territory before keeping any fish — minimum legal sizes, bag limits and identification guides are published by each fisheries department and are the authoritative source.
Hero spots in our coverage where Florida Pompano is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Out of season across our covered spots in June.
Find the bait first — walk the beach at low tide and look for the wash where sand fleas burrow (the little V-wakes and clouds of bubbles as a wave recedes), because pompano follow the mole-crab beds down the beach. Read the water for the first trough: that darker, deeper slot running parallel to shore between the sandbar and the dry sand, often within 30 feet of your feet on a high tide, and the cuts at either end of a bar where current funnels food. The classic approach is two long surf rods on spikes, fishing a high-low pompano rig with sand fleas or clam over a pyramid or sputnik sinker, casting into the trough and the back side of the bar and waiting for the rod tip to load up. The run-and-gun crowd works a Doc's Goofy jig or a pompano banana jig on a 7-foot spinning rod, casting up-current and hopping it back along the bottom so it puffs sand like a fleeing crab — tip it with a sliver of Fishbites and you get the scent plus the action. Prime US grounds are the Florida Panhandle beaches around Pensacola, Navarre and Destin, the central-east coast from Sebastian Inlet down through Vero and Stuart, the Space Coast at Cape Canaveral, and the Gulf beaches of Anna Maria Island and Sanibel; the run pushes up the Carolinas to the Outer Banks in late spring and summer. Keep moving until you find a pod — pompano travel in schools, so when one rod goes off, the rest of that stretch usually fires too.
Moving water is everything for pompano, and a strong outgoing (falling) tide is the most reliable window — the current pulls baitfish and sand-stirred crustaceans off the bar and out of the trough, lighting up a feeding lane the fish patrol. The last couple hours of the incoming and the first couple of the ebb around a high tide are gold because the trough holds enough water for fish to push in tight to the beach, sometimes into water you could wade. Slack tide, top or bottom, is dead time — if the rods go quiet at the turn, eat your sandwich and wait for the current to start ripping again. Pick a sputnik or pyramid heavy enough to hold bottom in that current so your bait sits in the strike zone instead of washing down-beach, and re-cast to reset it whenever the flow drags it out of the slot.
Moon phase is a secondary factor for pompano — tidal current strength matters far more than the phase itself. That said, the new and full moons bring the biggest tidal swings (spring tides), which means stronger, longer-running current through the trough, and many surf regulars feel those harder-moving days fish better simply because the water is working. Don't plan a trip around the moon; plan it around a strong falling tide, decent surf structure and a known sand-flea bed, and let the spring-tide periods be a tiebreaker when you're choosing between days.
Florida Pompano are managed as a recreational inshore species, and state waters carry both a daily bag limit and a minimum (and often slot/maximum) size limit, so measure every fish to the proper fork or total length before deciding to keep it. Rules differ between state waters and federal/offshore jurisdiction, and limits can vary by state along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, so what's legal in Florida may not match Alabama, Georgia or the Carolinas. Bag, size and any seasonal provisions are set by the state agency and adjusted periodically, so always confirm the current regulations with the relevant authority (for example the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) before you fish. Check the up-to-date rules for the specific state and waters you're fishing rather than relying on numbers that may have changed.
Olli-Mikael Vaittinen has fished his whole life. Fifteen years of fly fishing, guiding seasons on Norway's Lakselva — his favourite Atlantic salmon river — and a blue marlin landed in Vava'u, Tonga. Founder of Fishare — the app that puts the data behind the decisions every angler makes on the water.
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