08/18/2026
Scalloping might be the most fun you can legally have in four feet of water. 🐚
Here is the whole sport. You anchor over a turtle grass flat on the Big Bend, roll off the side, and float face down looking for two rows of tiny blue eyes staring back at you from the grass. Bay scallops have up to sixty of them and they are genuinely bright blue. When you reach for one it does not just sit there either. It claps its shell and jets sideways through the water like it is offended, and you end up chasing a shellfish across a grass flat while your family watches from the boat.
The season runs summer into early fall and the geography is specific. Steinhatchee, Keaton Beach, Crystal River, Homosassa, Port St. Joe. That stretch of coast has the shallow clear grass beds scallops need, which is also why it has never turned into condo country the way both ends of the state did.
Then you get back to the dock and pay for all that fun by cleaning them, which takes roughly four times as long as catching them and is the part nobody puts on the flyer.
What is your family's scalloping spot, and who in the crew always gets stuck cleaning?
