Due to the recent weather conditions, I decided to stop by Man Overboard Bait and Tackle and give live shrimp fishing a try. I usually prefer artificial or free lining big live baits, but live shrimp fishing is something I’ve only done a couple of times and the conditions seemed right. I spent a lot of time this week dodging the wind, looking for shorelines that had wind protecton and good sun exposure.

The setup I was using was a 7 foot medium fast action pole, 3000 size reel, 15lb braid, and 30lb leader. The line weight is heavy but even with 30lb I have to retie often when dock / heavy structure fishing. You can see why in the video too, as almost every fish had me wrapped up at first. I used a #1 VMC SSW hooks with a small split shot at first, but later I switched to a weightless setup. When I found the wind protected areas, the weightless live shrimp setup casted better and had a better action with a slower descent. I also liked the weightless setup for slow retrieves. Once the shrimp had settled to the bottom, I would slowly bounce it up or reel to bring it back up in the water column, and then let it slowly settle again.

So the beginning of my day did not start out as planned. When I jumped into the boat I thought I had left myself a ¼ tank of gas left for the next trip, but once I turned the power on, I saw that it was empty. I fired up the google machine and saw the local marina opens in 15 mins. Not too bad, but upon arrival the hours on the sign were an hour off from google. So I had an hour to kill at the marina. I got the party started by fishing some docks and nearby boats. I had one fish run me under some heavy structure and broke me off. After no bites, talking with some marina locals, and helping this huge all metal sailboats tie up, I filled up my boat and was underway.

I started in deep water residential canals, using my trolling motor to pitch under docks and mangroves. Surprisingly nothing hit, for a while. Like, aaahwille. It wasn’t until I fished off a bridge fender, that was creating a break in the wind current, that I caught my first fish. It was right off this bridge fender that I caught my first ever sheepshead. Which was awesome! I’m surprised how hard these fish fight for only being 12-13inchs long. The fish took me under structure immediately, and pulled some drag even though I had it pretty much locked down. I caught a couple more aggressive mangrove snappers at this spot and then continued to move on as the wind picked up. The second spot had two story houses on a “hill” that provide great wind protection. As I was setting up my rig, I could see a nice sized snook underneath the dock. I pitched in, and quickly hooked up. I thought it was going to be that snook, but ended up being another really nice sheepshead. I went from never catching a sheepshead to two in one day haha. A few more casts, a couple more mangrove snappers, and a small snooklet concluded my day of fishing.

I ended the video attached with some extra footage from earlier in the week. I was scouting out a new area in the Banana River, and caught a couple nice trout on a new lure to me.

See you guys next week =)
Spanky