We are going to Destin soon, and will be going with a guide fishing in the bay. Several of us also want to do some fishing off the Jetties, piers, or wading if we can. If anyone has any advice, I'm all ears. Not a stranger to saltwater, but have zero experience in Florida.

Good Luck on your trip.

Here's my experience:
I am also new to surf fishing, ~2 yrs, did a lot of research on you tube on how to read the surfs/tides/moon phases.
Did some wade fishing in Florida East Coast last month, caught several Bluefish and undersized Red drums ~17 inches.
I just had a 10 ft rod, 20lb braid, med reel, nothing fancy.
My setup was either a frozen Mullet with 2oz weight, or a 2oz artificial Bucktail or Grub.

The trick was throw it out as far as i can, slow retrieve so line don't slack, and set hook when there's a bite,
plus the waves were too strong to just let it sit.
Most of the bites were 6am-10am and 6pm-sun down

The guys that had a 5 rod setup with live baits and a lawn chair basically loose their baits and didn't catch anything.

I was in Navarre last month and the fishing in the surf for ladyfish and bluefish was really good each morning. It was a mix of blind casting and casting at schooling fish with topwater walking baits, wakebaits and spoons. We didn't have any surf gear, but we rigged up the rods I use in Texas for catfish and fished cut bait each night and caught a mix of hardheads, bluefish and small sharks.

The Bubble Rig and Gotcha Plugs were the go to lures for Spanish Mackerel. You can't go wrong with either one. It just depends on the conditions.
Catch King Mackerel off the end with fresh dead cigar minnow or better yet live blue runners, and cigar minnows caught off of gold hook rigs. Also live menhaden caught off the ribbon rigs.

When I fished there way back when shark fishing or slide line fishing was not allowed, so you might want to check with the pier.

[url=http://okaloosaislandpier.net/aboutus.htm][/url]

Thanks for the replies, hopefully we can get some tips from our guide and catch a few fish.

Fished the Okaloosa pier a couple hours this am
Got a nice lady fish
Saw shark an Spanish mackerel pulled in
Its fun, fish eat the shrimp before the weight gets to the bottom

I'm sure we will get into something. I don't much care what I catch. I'm just a jerk on one end waiting for a jerk on the other.

hope you miss the weather heading that way this week