If you know anyone in Central Florida see if they will get you some
"Specks" (folks up north would call them Crappie). That is a plentiful
native fish in most Florida lakes and they are good pan fish.
In salt water, it is hard to beat a snook but you have to catch them.
It is illegal to buy and sell them.
Yes, I've caught both, and both are tasty. Up here, we buy fresh cod,
halibut, flounder, and salmon, the latter allegedly from Alaska.
Neither my wife nor I much like the taste of striped bass.
When I was a kid, I used to like to catch porgies. As a little kid, I'd
go out almost every morning with a retired printer from whom my parents
rented a cottage. He was a hell of a fisherman. I was too small to clean
the fish, so whatever I brought back, he'd clean while I watched, and
I'd give at least two mealsworth to my mom to cook up. We used sandworms
for bait. On the way back, we'd troll for stripers along a rocky
waterfront and sometimes get lucky.
One of my favorite fish in Florida was whiting, which we thought had a
fine delicate taste. Easy to catch, too. Our neighbor from across the
street, who was from the Philippines, would only take the heads, never
the filets. She made a soup of of them. It drove her husband nutso,
because the soup had the fish eyeballs floating in them, and the sight
of them made him queasy, or so he claimed. Also liked kingfish and
Spanish mack steaks, and all the flounder we caught under the boat docks
at the marinas in St. Augustine. Florida has terrific salt-water
fishing. Up here, in the Bay, it is in comparison mediocre.