Naples is one of Florida’s top fishing towns. See city rankings.
The fish must be biting in Naples, as the city, located just a few blocks from the Gulf of Mexico, is regarded as one of Florida’s top fishing destinations.
This is according to a new survey by FishingBooker, the most popular website for arranging fishing vacations in the United States, according to a recent article by Mark. H Bickel of Naples Daily News.
The study evaluated the best fishing places in each state in the United States using six criteria determined from FishingBooker’s internal data, which was acquired from over 100,000 fishing visits in the previous year.
In Florida, 202 communities were graded on a scale of one to ten in six categories.
Destin came in first with 59 out of 60 points, followed by Panama City Beach (53 points), St. Petersburg, and Islamorada (51 points each).
In one of six categories, Average Recommended Score, it scored the maximum ten points. Cape Coral, a little further north in Lee County, obtained 42 points with full marks in Average Review Score and Average Recommended Score, while Fort Myers received 41 points with the same maximum score in Average Review Score.
The top 15 fishing spots in Florida are:
- Destin
- Panama City Beach
- St. Petersburg
- Islamorada
- Key West
- St. Augustine
- Marathon
- Naples
- Cape Coral
- Crystal River
- Pensacola
- Key Largo
- Fort Myers
- Sarasota
- Fort Lauderdale
Methodology for ranking the best fishing villages in Florida.
Based on FishingBooker’s own data from over 100,000 fishing trips and related reviews and reports, their in-depth study of the US’s fishing opportunities led to 6 different ranking criteria. The criteria are:
- The number of available fishing charters
- Average review score.
- Average suggested score.
- Number of guides received the Angler’s Choice Award.
- Number of bookings
- Minimum cost of a fishing excursion.
- A minimum of one booking in the location was required, and all of the above criteria were based only on data from the previous year.
It took some time to figure out the criteria and then adding up all the scores gave us the final list of the best fishing spots in each US state, ranked from best to worst.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News