Findng Bait And Finding Fish.

[Kowen117]

Looking to start saltwater fishing this summer. I will be doing %100 inshore fishing for snook, redfish, trout, and flounder. First what should I look for when trying to locate bait? After I have my bait what are some key things to look for when locate fish? Do these fish relate to cover like bass or are they just cruising the flats?

[aumdb487]

I can only talk to Redfish and Speckled trout... I go down to the gulf in Mississippi redfishing and trout fishing once a year. The area I'm fishing is a marsh like with tall grass. The best bait to catch anything is a shrimp. if you want want to live bait the shrimp is first and a bull minnow or finger mullet would be second. If you perfer plastic then Gulp makes a shrimp that has a pretty good smell to it and works well until it drys up. D.O.A has a good shrimp lure as well. A single Colorado blade spinnerbait works in dirty water. Reds and Trout move with the tide and seasons. Summer they will be deeper and closer to ocean. Fall they will be more inland and in skinny water.

[SirSnookalot]

I inshore saltwater fish every day. Most of the time you will see the baitfish surfacing, easy to spot, sabiki rigs make catching them pretty easy, mullet have to be netted. For a novice I would recommend keeping it real simple at first, catch bait or buy some shrimp, squid, or frozen sardines, then play bait and wait, usually the most productive method. I'd start off casting by using spoons, bucktails, hard and soft jerkbaits. Learning the nuances of your target species in relationship to tides is most important, but don't over think just go fish.

Summer is a good time to start learning, more bait and fish are around, wintertime can be real dead. When casting you need only 4 lures, spoon, bucktail jig, soft or hard jerkbait and a topwater lure. Many places have little or no structure, like the beach, in time you will learn where and how to cast on the beach. Snook love fast current, incoming waves and ambush from pier pylons and the sides of sea walls. Jacks for example just swim and look for bait, never no where or when they will show up...........just have to learn what is relative to your area.

[Kowen117]

I inshore saltwater fish every day. Most of the time you will see the baitfish surfacing, easy to spot, sabiki rigs make catching them pretty easy, mullet have to be netted. For a novice I would recommend keeping it real simple at first, catch bait or buy some shrimp, squid, or frozen sardines, then play bait and wait, usually the most productive method. I'd start off casting by using spoons, bucktails, hard and soft jerkbaits. Learning the nuances of your target species in relationship to tides is most important, but don't over think just go fish.

Summer is a good time to start learning, more bait and fish are around, wintertime can be real dead. When casting you need only 4 lures, spoon, bucktail jig, soft or hard jerkbait and a topwater lure. Many places have little or no structure, like the beach, in time you will learn where and how to cast on the beach. Snook love fast current, incoming waves and ambush from pier pylons and the sides of sea walls. Jacks for example just swim and look for bait, never no where or when they will show up...........just have to learn what is relative to your area.

Thanks! Your tips on snook are very helpful! I have done quite a bit of inshore fishing with my cousin, so I am not a complete beginner. He just caught a 35 and a 33 inch snook last week. this will be my first time getting bait and fishing alone. I plan on buying a 8 or 9ft cast net here next week. But I will probably start with some shrimp and artificial. One last thing. How important are the tides?

[SirSnookalot]

How important are the tides?

To quote the first guide I ever went with........"Tide is everything"

Believe me, bait swimming around is a big help too, bait is staring to come in thick this time of year. Not that inshore fishing is complicated, there is a lot of information that will be learned along the way to make you more successful, just can't cover everything in a single thread.

Let me give you a couple of bait tips to get you started. Whether using a net or sabiki, get yourself a 5 gallon plastic bucket to put your bait in, an aerator is not a bad idea, and a length of rope tied to the bucket to lower it to the water if on a pier or jettie. This is the secret, so don't tell anyone, lol.......especially if using a mullet, but all bait fish, clip a tail, dorsal or anal fin to make the fish seem in distress, isolating YOUR bait often times is the difference between catching them or not. Fishing should improve as the snook season ended yesterday.

We can get into artificials, which I mostly do, and gear some other time. I don't recommend specific rods, reels and lines, but I will tell you what type of gear is popular for each venue and target species.

[Bassn Blvd]

To quote the first guide I ever went with........"Tide is everything"

Believe me, bait swimming around is a big help too, bait is staring to come in thick this time of year. Not that inshore fishing is complicated, there is a lot of information that will be learned along the way to make you more successful, just can't cover everything in a single thread.

Let me give you a couple of bait tips to get you started. Whether using a net or sabiki, get yourself a 5 gallon plastic bucket to put your bait in, an aerator is not a bad idea, and a length of rope tied to the bucket to lower it to the water if on a pier or jettie. This is the secret, so don't tell anyone, lol.......especially if using a mullet, but all bait fish, clip a tail, dorsal or anal fin to make the fish seem in distress, isolating YOUR bait often times is the difference between catching them or not. Fishing should improve as the snook season ended yesterday.

We can get into artificials, which I mostly do, and gear some other time. I don't recommend specific rods, reels and lines, but I will tell you what type of gear is popular for each venue and target species.

Absolutely 100% dead on.

[Kowen117]

Thanks guys. I will defiantly take the tides into consideration. As far a artificial goes I plan on taking a lot of my bass lures and just experimenting with them. Live bait with defiantly be aerated. And I never thought about clipping the tail seems like that would be good for bass too. Sirsnookalot our snook season is still closed over here until September of this year and it has been closed since the freeze of 2010. Again thanks a lot guys.

[SirSnookalot]

Rules are different on the Atlantic side. Snook can be a very finicky fish, I've literally dropped a jig into a snook's mouth only to see it swim away. I've casted lures into a snook/tarpon frenzy dozens of times without a strike for up to an hour, they are too busy with live bait. Snook can be tough to entice a strike, but at other times nothing could be easier, a hookup on every cast, you just never know.

Snook fishing is very similar to bass fishing. They are not the most formidable fighters you will run into in saltwater but a 10#+ will give you all you can handle, unless you have experience I would recommend not fishing with gear that's too light, especially if using bait.