Capt Salty Charters

Capt Salty Charters books private fishing trips from the docks off Beck Avenue, in the heart of the St. Andrews waterfront on the south side of Panama City. This stretch of shoreline sits a short walk from St. Andrews Marina, the public harbor where much of Bay County’s charter fleet keeps its slips, and it puts anglers on St. Andrews Bay within minutes of leaving the dock rather than fighting traffic across the Hathaway Bridge to reach the boats based in Panama City Beach.

The bay around St. Andrews is a mix of grass flats, oyster bars, and channel edges that hold redfish, speckled trout, and flounder for most of the year. The pass out toward the Gulf opens up bottom fishing and trolling for king mackerel and Spanish mackerel once the water warms in late spring. Because the operation runs as a single boat rather than a large fleet, trips are built around what the group wants to catch and what the tide and wind allow that day, not a fixed menu of packages sold at a counter.

Booking works the way it does for most owner-operated boats along this part of the Panhandle: a phone call rather than instant online checkout. Anglers should expect to talk through trip length, target species, and what the boat provides in terms of tackle and bait before confirming a date, and to ask about current Florida saltwater fishing license requirements for anything kept rather than released. Trips run as private charters, meaning the boat is booked for one group rather than filled seat by seat, which tends to suit families and small groups who want the captain’s full attention.

St. Andrews itself rewards arriving early. The historic district along Beck Avenue and 10th Street has kept its fishing village character even as the rest of Bay County has grown up around it, with seafood houses, a public pier, and open water views toward Shell Island across the bay. Parking near the marina is usually easy outside of peak summer weekends, and the walk from a parked car to the docks takes only a few minutes.

Because Capt Salty Charters does not run a storefront or a published booking calendar, the most reliable way to nail down a date is a direct call ahead of a planned trip, especially during the busier spring and summer stretch when boats around St. Andrews fill up on short notice. Rates and trip length are set on a per-charter basis rather than posted online, so confirming price and what is included before the day of the trip is worth the extra few minutes on the phone.