A big strike got me excited but it was just this pig-snouted mystery species…
I hit the surf in Melbourne Beach at Ponce de Leon yesterday. It was outgoing tide at about 6pm when I got a line in the water. Maybe it was just the sun going down, but the water didn’t look as clean as it did on nearby surf cams just a few hours earlier. There were enough weeds in the water to be annoying, but it wasn’t too bad and seemed to get better as the tide went out. Sand fleas were everywhere and abundant.
The plan was to try and catch a croaker on a Pompano rig, and then in turn, use it as snook bait. But, there was so much whiting in the water, we were doubling up on them with almost every cast. They were pretty much all in the 10-12″ range, and aggressively eating anything I could put on a hook — live shrimp, peeled shrimp, Native Salt Bait Clams, Fishbites, sand fleas, etc. That whiting bite remained hot throughout the whole time I was out there. I finally did manage to catch a perfect snook snack croaker, but it was getting dark and time to go.
Corri kept herself entertained with some feisty crabs.
There were also a good number of calico crabs in the shoreline. I’ve heard that they can work well for snook so I baited one up. Unfortunately, I only had a 1oz egg sinker and the surf was just a little bit too rough for it to hold in the trough.
Hopefully I’ll get that snook next time.
Calico crabs you say? Found a bunch of them last week in the Vero surf and didn’t know what they were called. Was going to do the same, grab one and put it on a hook and see what ate it but they dig quick.
Yep, calico crabs. They dig! We caught 3 or 4 that we released right away, and for the next hour or so I’d see their random pincers sticking straight out of the sand as the water would recede.
I talked with Caleb Couture the other day, and he is not as high on them for targeting snook as some others are. He said he likes to use them in cooler weather months, with big permit specifically in mind.
I went back to the beach in Indialantic last night hoping to get a snook on topwater, but the conditions were just gross. A bit windy with super weedy, dirty ass water. There were no weeds in the sand, but man were they thick in the surf. And not the big clumpy variety, but the smaller, finer grass that’s a real bitch to get off your line. One cast and it took a good 15 min to pull all the garbage off.
That’s a Mojarra.
Yep, you right. Doh. I guess I only ever see the 3-4 inchers and the extra janky snout threw me off.