Snook bite heats up on the Treasure Coast as the mullet run builds

What's biting

What's next

With snook season freshly reopened and the mullet run only beginning to stack up per Snook Nook (FL), expect the inlet and beachfront snook bite to keep building through the next several days rather than peak immediately — bigger, more consistent schools of finger mullet are described as still a couple weeks out, and snook typically key hard off that bait once it thickens. Anglers fishing live croakers and threadfins around inlet structure and passes should keep finding fish in the meantime, with the bite likely to intensify as more mullet arrive.

Offshore, the second mahi season Saltwater Sportsman describes as opening around mid-September should be gaining steam right now and continuing into early fall — worth working the usual weed lines and current edges over the next couple of weeks while that push is active.

Sailfish should stay in the mix on the Atlantic side; the Snook Nook tournament result and the West Palm catch logged by Coastal Angler Magazine both point to fish being present and biting, though sail numbers can be patchy day to day depending on wind and current. Redfish action, like the Sebastian Inlet bull red Coastal Angler Magazine reported, tends to hold steady through September in this region and is a reasonable bet on moving water around structure.

No kingfish push yet — Coastal Angler Magazine frames the fall kingfish migration as still approaching, so that bite is more of an October target than something to plan a trip around this week. Anglers timing a weekend trip should lean toward the inlet snook bite and any mahi push offshore as the two most active options right now, checking local tide tables for the best moving-water windows since no live buoy or gauge readings are available for this update to pin down specific timing.

Context

A snook reopener stacking up against an early mullet run is a fairly classic late-summer-into-fall pattern for Florida's Treasure Coast — Snook Nook's own reporting frames this year's run as running a bit behind average because of a cooler winter, with bigger mullet schools still filling in rather than already established. That's a modest delay rather than anything unusual for the region. The second mahi season Saltwater Sportsman describes for mid-September is also a recurring, on-schedule seasonal event for South Florida's Atlantic coast, not an early or late anomaly this year.

One wrinkle worth flagging: red snapper management on the South Atlantic side has been unsettled this year. CCA Florida reported a federal court injunction blocking the 2026 South Atlantic red snapper Exempted Fishing Permit pilot programs for Florida and neighboring states, arriving just before the state's planned Atlantic season under that program — a disruption to what anglers may have been expecting for red snapper access this fall. That's a regulatory story rather than a conditions one, but it's shaping expectations for anglers who typically plan around a fall red snapper opportunity; check current state and federal regs before targeting that species. Beyond those two threads, the angler intel available doesn't offer a clean multi-year comparison for the broader inshore/nearshore bite, so treat the above as directional rather than a firm early/late/on-schedule call.