Hot days and warm breezes come to mind when thinking about a typical summer in South Florida. Those steamy, humid months are also an ideal time to get off dry land and enjoy one of the region’s favorite pastimes: recreational saltwater fishing.
With swordfish, wahoo, blackfin tuna, tarpon, kingfish, mahi-mahi and amberjack all in high season – and the much awaited annual lobster short season at the end of July – South Florida is considered by many to be the “Fishing Capital of the World.” And there’s no better time to head out onto the ocean than summer! In recent years, the saltwater fishing industry has generated over $2.9 million annually just from the sale of more than 1.6 million recreational fishing licenses. The National Marine Fisheries Service estimates saltwater fishing has an approximately $7.6 billion economic impact in Florida and supports nearly 110,000 jobs through retail, manufacturing, research and, of course, tourism.
Pictured here, fishermen line the Sunny Isles Pier during a mackerel run in 1966. Photo from the Miami News Collection, courtesy of HistoryMiami. The HistoryMiami Archives & Research Center is open to the public and contains more than 1.1 million images of Southeast Florida, the entire state and the Caribbean from 1883 to the present. For more information, visit historymiami.org. (Image 1989-011-15788)
