By Captain Mike Smith
Many anglers haphazardly run around searching for fish. They see a fishy looking point and anchor up and start casting. Hours later they give up and go home empty handed.
That fishy looking point probably does have fish on it some of the time, but not all the time.
What did they do wrong? They forgot that fish move around based on water temperatures, food resources, currents, water quality and the presence of larger predators. In my experience, 80% of the fish will be in 20% of the area based on those conditions.
Here are the three most important pro tips to help you catch more fish.
1. Find Feeding Fish. My fishing charters always start by scanning mangrove shorelines, grass flats, and spoil islands for feeding fish. Obviously, this is the easiest way to figure out where the fish are. If you can find baits being crushed by predatory fish, then start casting there. Even if you only find nervous bait, that’s still a great spot to start casting.
2. Find Food Resources. When the fish are not actively feeding your next best bet is finding bait. Sometimes the bait is obvious and you can start casting along the edges of the schools.
If you can’t actually see any bait then let the birds tell you where it is and what size it is. Birds always know where the food is. When you see diving pelicans or a great blue heron perched on a mangrove branch you know there is bait there.
The various bird species will tell you what lures to cast. When you see small wading birds like snowy egrets, little blue herons, green herons and tri-colored herons, then you know to cast something small.
This really helps because you can grab your three-inch paddle tail or 2.75 inch shrimp and know that you are fishing with the right size lure. Those smaller herons usually target baits that are three inches or smaller.
When you see great white egrets, great blue herons and brown pelicans it gets a little harder to figure out the size of the baits to use. You know there is food there but those birds will eat anything from a two-inch minnow up to an eight-inch mullet.
This is when you need an assortment of different sizes and profiles of lures. I usually have a three-inch paddle tail, an artificial shrimp and a four to five and half inch jerkbait (fluke) rigged on my rods. Start casting until you figure out what the fish want on that day.
3. Find Moving Water. The next important factor is moving water. All of the predatory inshore species that you want to catch like a little bit of current.
They will typically be facing into the current waiting for some unsuspecting food resource to flow past their ambush point.
Your strongest currents are going to occur during the full moon and the new moon. Coincidentally, the best fishing occurs around these two moon phases.
Go get ‘em!
Capt. Mike Smith, owner of Fish Your Ass Off Charters, is an inshore fishing guide who has been fishing the inshore waters, oyster bars and grass flats of Florida for more than 40 years. Reach him at (561) 339-2317, email: contact@fishyourassoff.com or visit fishyourassoff.com.
