Pompano and Spanish and Snook, Oh My!

Last week, our family made our annual vacation to Brevard County to enjoy the beautiful beaches, tasty seafood, and excellent surf fishing. We came loaded with plenty of casting spoons, suspension baits, and top-water plugs to throw, along with Fishbites and fresh-frozen shrimp to see what we could entice into a hook-up.

The action started immediately with Whiting sucking down Fishbites as soon as the bait would hit the water. Meanwhile, spoons and plugs were producing loads of Bluefish, Spanish Mackerel, and what appeared to be juvenile Barracuda.

We were already having a blast, but the action heated up ten-fold on Wednesday morning. While retrieving a top-water plug, something large exploded at the surface and started ripping drag from my reel. After several minutes of fighting (including several minutes of jogging up and down the beach), I landed my very first monster Snook. We quickly removed the hook, snapped a picture, and sent her back on her way.

Later that afternoon, Dad was busy landing multiple beautiful Pompano with Fishbites and shrimp. If that wasn’t good enough, something large took the bait and started aggressively taking line down the beach. Once again, we were in for a long fight! At the end of the battle, my dad worked the reel and my girlfriend waded out to finish landing the fish and bringing it to the beach. Once again, we snapped a quick picture and quickly released her to swim back home.

By the end of the week, we landed over 11 different types of fish from the surf. We’ve always had very productive results fishing the beaches of Brevard County, but we never could have dreamed the success we experienced last week. Plenty of great memories were made and we returned home to St. Louis with many awesome fishing stories to tell!