Charles,
Welcome to the Big Bend area of FL. You won't need lots and lots of mallards around here. Wouldn't hurt to keep some but I'd suggest keeping more hens than drakes. Mottled ducks look like the hens.
The Gulf can be very good for divers so layouts could be quite effective, but you will want a BIG boat for going out on the Gulf. It doesn't take much for the shallow waters of the Gulf around here to get ugly. One hunt we were on started out mostly still and within a couple hours a front began moving through and the water got really ugly. One boat out there didn't get their layout boats out of the water soon enough and the layouts swamped and the tender boat was not big enough to pull in the layouts without swamping. It took a couple of bigger boats to help them out.
If money were not object, I'd say get as many teal as possible (but I love teal). Since money often is a limiter then if you will hunt the east side of FL frequently, teal decoys are a great addition to your rig. If you were going to mainly stick around this side of FL, you would be better off with divers and coots probably. You can get a lot of wood ducks in some of the swamps around Taylor county.
Keep in mind that Leon county has restrictions on what days you can hunt and motor restrictions on some of the lakes.
Dani
