Mississippi isn’t know for snook, but the prized sportfish are beginning to show up in Magnolia State waters. On April 21, Kayak angler Matthew Mitchell set a new record for the species, shattering a previous record from 2025.
Mitchell was fishing in the Gulf somewhere near Biloxi when he hooked the snook on conventional tackle. According to the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, snook are expanding their range into the Pascagoula Estuary, east of Biloxi Harbor, due to warming waters.
Mitchell’s snook weighed 5 pounds, 6.4 ounces. Though small for the species, his new record eclipsed the previous one—set by Vince Wray in January 2025—by a full 4 pounds, 7 ounces. The large jump in size from one record to the next shows that snook are becoming more established in waters off the coast of Mississippi.
According to the International Gamefish Association (IGFA), snook are fast-growing fish, reaching 12-14 inches in their first year and 24-26 inches by age three. Angler Roman Duenas Marquez broke the IGFA all-tackle world record for Pacific white snook last July with a 60-pound, 13-ounce fish caught on a beach in Mexico. The reigning all-tackle world record for common snook was caught in 1978. It weighed 53 pounds, 10 ounces.
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Mitchell hosts his own Youtube channel, YaknAdventures, where he documents his coastal excursions catching everything form redfish to tuna from the seat of his Hobie kayak. In a posts shared to Instagram and Facebook, he was short on details about the catch. But he did share a photo of a certificate from MDMR confirming his snook as the new Mississippi state record.
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