Capt. Billy Bright had planned to do a little nighttime snook fishing, but he needed several hefty live baits to tempt those big linesiders. His friend Rodney Sahr’s boat was tied up to the Port Canaveral public boat ramp, but as Bright stood at the water’s edge, he realized the “ammo” he needed for his big fish shootout was literally right at his feet.
Swirling and splashing in the moonlight, a mix of silver mullet and the larger black mullet offered an easy target, so with one well-aimed toss of his 10-foot cast net, he easily nabbed four dozen. Carrying the loaded net to the dock, he pursed out the captives so he and his fishing pal could pick out the perfect sized baits and send the rest back to the water.
This and a few more options illustrate a simple principle: Catching/finding your own bait is the appetizer before the main course.
Ribbon Rally
While Bright and Sahr would later send live mullet into snook abodes, they first spent a couple of hours rounding up ribbonfish — those slender, shiny predators with the toothy jaws that make excellent king mackerel baits. Here, they needed only inch-long chunks of cut mullet on No. 2 long shank hooks with small glow sticks about a foot and a half up the line.
Ribbonfish also bite during the daytime, but they’re particularly active at night, often seen leaping across the surface to chase baitfish. Boat lights help, as does shining a spotlight on your target area, if you’re fishing from shore. The small light on your rig helps attract ribbons to your bait.
Because ribbonfish are trolled dead, anglers brine them in a mix of kosher salt, baking soda, sea water and ice to toughen them for freezing. Slipped into vacuum-sealed sleeves, the baitfish will last until needed.
Sabiki Savvy
Probably the easiest and most beginner-friendly method of catching various baits, the standard sabiki rig comprises a string of small gold hooks (often tied with glow beads and various colorful accents) on dropper loops. A weight at the bottom sinks the rig.
When cast or vertically dropped to baitfish schools, the rig resembles the small forage that baitfish such as sardines, threadfin herring, cigar minnows, and blue runners eat. Baitfish become ensnared when they snap at the tiny objects, and if you give it a few seconds after the initial tug, you’ll often score multiple catches — maybe even the “full house” with a bait on every hook.
Tip: It may be tempting to yank the whole rig of the package and “figure it out,” but you’ll only make that mistake once. Sabikis are packaged with orderly wraps on a cardboard sleeve so you can easily remove one section at a time. Impatient yanking yields a jumbled mess.
Tie your line to the end with the single swivel, attach your sinker to the snap swivel and use the latter end to carefully pull the rig out of the package. Adjust weight size for depth and current strength.
Another point to consider is bait care. Too much handling weakens baitfish and removes their slime coating. Avoid this by using a hook-out tool (wooden or plastic handle with a wire stem crooked at the end) to grab a sabiki hook’s bend, invert the hook and let the bait’s weigh pull it off the hook.
Ideally, you should drop baitfish directly into a bait well, or at least a bucket of water for shuttling to the well. Experienced crews designate a “dehooker” who stands by the bait well and removes baitfish as sabiki operators swing their catches astern.
Jetty Joy
With concentrated structure, endless hidey holes and an entire ecosystem of progressively larger species, the jetty rocks guarding inlets and other vulnerable areas from erosion/siltation also offer tremendous angling opportunities. Big snapper, grouper, tarpon, snook, and redfish patrol these areas and many of the smaller fish they eat readily bite small jetty rigs.
Tie a couple of No. 8-10 hooks on dropper loops, with a weight below (kind of a heavier version of the Sabiki set up with fewer hooks.) and bait with cut shrimp or squid. Catch pinfish, various grunts, blue runners, etc. and immediately deploy your fresh live bait on a heavier rod with a circle hook, then wait for a larger predator to take advantage of the easy meal.
Crafty With Crustaceans
Redfish, drum, and sheepshead eat a lot of crabs and if you’re quick, coastal areas offer lots of opportunities to gather a day’s supply of fiddler crabs. You’ll often see large fiddler colonies at low tide when they emerge from their holes to forage along marsh edges, secluded beaches and rocky shorelines.
The males have one oversized claw that’s more for show than battle, but territorial disputes often find the boys locking up until one yields. Most of the time, the male fiddlers just wave those big pinchers to claim their area.
A similar species, the mangrove crab inhabits some of the same areas as fiddlers, but you’ll usually see them scaling walls, climbing trees, and ducking in and out of dock structure. Mangrove crabs lack the oversized claws and their eye stalks are positioned at their head’s outer corners, while a fiddler’s eyes are centered.
If you’re quick, you can pick mangrove crabs off their preferred climbing spots, but fiddlers spend most of their time on the ground where they’ll dash into their holes to escape danger. Patience is key, as dashing toward a bunch of feeding fiddlers rarely proves productive.
One option, bury several empty coffee cans in the sand amid a fiddler colony, indicated by lots of little sand balls sitting outside recent excavations. Watch until a bunch of crabs emerge to feed, then rush forward to send them scurrying. Many will tumble into the cans for easy capture.
Another option, place a window screen, or a homemade screen trap comprising a PVC frame with a mesh interior on the ground near a fiddler colony, bait with fish meal or crumbled crackers, hide a short distance away and wait for a couple dozen crabs to wander into the trap. Once you load up, quickly lift your trap and dump the fiddlers into a bucket.
Tip: Build your trap with excess mesh in the middle, so when you lift, the crabs tumble into the interior, rather than scurry over the sides.
Blue crabs make great surf fishing bait for redfish, black drum, permit, pompano, and whiting. Cut into chunks for larger fish or use the “knuckles” (leg joints) for smaller rigs. Walking grass flats at night with a high-powered headlamp and scooping crabs with a dip net makes for a fun evening, but you’ll also get blues in fold-up traps baited with chicken necks.
A popular tactic for coastal piers and docks, the trap’s sides lay flat until a crab responds to the bait. Then, a sharp tug on the pull line snaps the sides upward to contain the crab as you pull it to you.
Lastly, watch the waves departing on a beach and you may see a V-shaped disturbance. Quickly dig up the wet sand at the point and you might find a mole crab (aka sand flea) trying to bury into the bottom. As far as bait value, sand fleas are to pompano what M&Ms are to small children.
Shell Game
Oysters, mussels, and clams offer dandy bait for a host of predators including sheepshead, black drum, redfish, and striped bass (mostly larger clams). Shuck the mollusks with an oyster knife, but don’t discard the shells. Toss them into a bucket and crush them with the top of a hammer to form a gritty chum.
Toss your fresh chum toward the area you’ll fish and then send in your baited hook. The scent drives fish into a feeding frenzy so they’re more likely to bite.
With any shellfish collection, check local regulations and if you dig up a beach area, restore the surface before leaving.
