As water temperatures cool, both cobia and tripletail will begin showing up on the Port Canaveral Buoy line and on flotsam, both near-shore and offshore. When sight fishing tripletail try fishing a bucktail jig tipped with a live shrimp hooked through the tail from underneath and if you’re dropping jigs around the buoys, use the same setup but switch out to a heaver jig head. For cobia, when retrieving the jig, do not let it sink. When the cobia sees the jig, reel as fast as you can to emulate a fleeing fish. Tip the cobe jigs with shrimp, squid, or a large soft plastic tail or eel. Both these fish can be found in 20 to 50 foot depths from the bight off Port Canaveral, south to Patrick AFB. Pay close attention to floating debris where tripletail congregate, and rays which hold the cobia.
November is one of the best months to target snook at Sebastian Inlet. While the mullet run is on, anglers should make plans to take advantage of hungry predators. In addition, large flounder and oversized redfish have begun to show up on the Port Canaveral buoy line and in the inlets of Ponce De Leon and Sebastian, and their numbers will increase as the flounder begin their seaward migration out of the lagoon. When targeting flounder around the inlets, I use the same setup I used for tripletail, only drifted slowly bouncing the shrimp tipped jig along the bottom in sandy areas. Another way is a small fingerling mullet (2-3.5 inch candy-sized) with just enough lead for the current. Pin the weight at 10 inches to keep bait near the bottom.
Finally, the tailing black drum and redfish have shown up early on the flats in the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoons. When targeting black drum, concentrate your efforts on the deeper side on the sandbars that parallel the western shore.
