Cocoa Beach Snook Fishing

Dreaming of Snook Fishing in Cocoa Beach Florida

Charter Captain Richard Bradley took Justin Thummel and his father Jeff snook fishing off Cocoa Beach. Altogether they landed 7 redfish, 6 snook, releasing all but a few for the table. Captain Richard's daughter Savannah went along at the request of Justin, she caught and released her first sizable snook by-herself while casting a mister-twister jig in the rolling surf.

"I wanted to show my dad that I could cast and catch without his assistance this time, and it was great. I really showed him with the BIG snook I caught on the first cast, right off of Cocoa Beach" explained Savannah.

"We never got a chance to fish! These kids kept hooking up and reeling in the fish!" Explained Jeff Thummel after returning to the boat ramp. "It was incredible, I've never seen anything like it... with kids, Captain Richard looked for easy quality fish for our kids and scored big time. I'll keep going on charters with Richard as long as I can hold a fishing pole."

"Keeping kids occupied while fishing is the biggest challenge in fishing. You want them to win... and win quickly. If you don't they'll quickly loose interest and that's when the things can get challenging." explains Charter Captain Richard Bradley. "I always try and put kids on easy fish that can pull a line and make them excited, then I pursuade them to use their patience to try and catch a really big fish later in the morning or day."

Where to Find
Cocoa Beach Snook...

This is a difficult question to answer in a brief paragraph, but I'll attempt. Cocoa Beach has a saltwater lagoon to the west and the ocean to the east. I found the fish pictured during the fall mullet run around the mouth of Port Canaveral adjacent to Cocoa Beach, but I often find great snook fishing at night during much of the cooler parts of the year in the Port itself. During the Spring, the lagoon's thousand islands can have great early morning snook fishing with fly, light tackle or bait casters around the mangroves. The fall can also produce some of the larger inshore snook lining the shorelines when there's a good amount of water in the lagoons.

When is the best time to pursue Cocoa Beach Snook?

During the warmer months is typically the best. Big snook are spawning on the beaches during the summer so look for late spring and early summer to be productive. As the summer waines down you can find them eating up calories during the fall mullet run at inlets or in the lagoon itself. Then as winter sets in... Snook can become less predictable and seek out warmer water or migrate further south to take advantage of warmer climates. Snook are usually caught during less sunlight hours or at night. Early morning anglers can find them along mangrove shorelines and late night fishermen can look around lighted docks or wharfs. Sebastian holds the lion's share of snook in our area during the fall and spring months. The kids in the story above caught their snook during the fall mullet in Sept/Oct near the beach when it was calm (a rare combination in the fall).

What Do You Catch
Cocoa Beach Snook on?

Lures and livebait are favorites of snook fisherman. However, you won't nail down anything as a all time favorite as many anglers seem to specialize in thier own domains. Captain Richard likes to live bait snook, but you'll find him lofting flies under the mangroves in the spring for fun almost every year. Others like topwaters as snook will often attack noisy plugs chugging on the surface. "Growing up on Merritt Island I thought subsurface lures like mirrorlures and rapalas were the only thing that caught snook", explains Captain Richard. "Then in high school a friend of mine introduced me to live bait drifting at Sebastian Inlet and that was the end of the that era and launched a decade long search for big snook in around Florida's inlets and waterways. Live bait seemed to be the most consistant and that's my favorite nowadays too."

I'm a big finger mullet fan during the fall mullet run because they're easy to come by and fish are relating to them anyway. Many people don't have the confidence to try a live bait, but with a little patience and experiementing snook are usually pretty accepting to one of these tasty little snook baits.