Transcription
[Music] [Music] Guys, real quick, and then we're gonna get this guy back in the water. But what a beautiful tripletail! This is an amazing eating fish. Now, we got a whole show to shoot, and I want to get this guy back in, but you ever hit a chance to, you over these? They're fantastic. All right, we got—we're gonna go over some tools here for you guys, really important surf fishing tools.
Number one, paramount to your success out here is gonna be having a strong pliers. Now, these—these are some pliers that we use in our freshwater fishing travel kit, and we like these out here because you got the line cutter here, the wire cutter for your leaders, a crimper when you're crimping down for making leaders, as well as a hook remover. And so these are just super easy; they're really versatile. But, you know what? They are stainless steel; they're gonna rust; they're not ideal for saltwater. And so you might want to invest in some pretty expensive ones. Otherwise, you know, you can get a $5, $6 pair like this, and they work fantastic out here.
Second, you got to have a fillet knife, and this is going to enable you to cut your cut bait, as well as, you know, trim down some shrimp or cut up your squid, so you can get scripts out. And so these are really important for just your bait management, but also important if you catch anything out here; you're gonna want to fillet it quickly and gut it at least before you get home because it's so hot out here, the water so warm. So, to have fresh fillets, if you are keeping fish, you want to have a fillet knife on hand while you're out on the water.
Lastly, we've got some bolt cutters here, and you know, not everybody needs these. If you're fishing in Florida, you gotta have a manya. But these are for shark waters, right? If we touch a big shark or any shark that's any kind of exotic or, you know, no-go species list in group two or group three down here in Florida, we got to be able to cut the leader and get that shark back out, not even taking it out of the water. So this is a regulatory precaution as well as a safety precaution; it's just really helpful when you've got those big shark on and you got to get that hook removed; you can't really get in there, and you're just gonna have to cut the line. So just a pair of typical bolt cutters in your hardware store. These two must have; this one here in Florida must have; otherwise, you know, if you're going for shark, you should have it on you. All right, last on your list of gear that you need is a classic rag, washcloth, whatever. It's super important because you're gonna get real slimy with the bait, you know, real slimy handling the fish, and your gear is gonna get all messed up. So it's really easy to just have one of these to clean your hands off when you're dealing with all sorts of stuff, right?
And what we want to cover with bait is the classic bait that you're gonna get at your local tackle shop or a Walmart or a sporting goods store somewhere in the coastal region that you're fishing. This is gonna tip eclis be frozen bait, and every once in a while you're gonna get some live bait as well. For frozen bait, you know, bees are specific to the Gulf Coast and probably the southeastern US, but they're interchangeable with so many other things, right? We're gonna talk about a big cut mullet, right? That's just bunker on the East Coast, right? Squids gonna be the same everywhere. These little finger mullets, they're gonna be, you know, maybe greenbacks, also known as Pilcher's or pin fish or whatever, you know, smaller bait fish size thing. And then shrimp, shrimps classic everywhere, right? So I'm gonna show you guys how to cut these up, get them rigged up, as well as, you know, how to rig up maybe a live bait, smaller fish, right? That's just great for, you know, the nearshore stuff. So we're gonna start cutting these up for you guys and join you how to get them on the hooks.
You guys how we're reading the beach and how we are putting our rigs and using our lures in relation to the different forms of structure on the beach. So the most simple constant competition when I get out there: first a sand bar, and then after that sandbar there's gonna be a second trough and a second sand bar for a second draw, some rocks or just a steady decline, right? And what we're working with here with our first trough, we've got our sandbar, then we have a second trough and a line of rocks, bar comes in towards the shore, the trough ends and funnels out. So why we're positioned right here, wanna be—want to have access to this first draw; it's a highway for bait fish and most of the game fish we're chasing after. And if it goes into a point like the point that we're seeing right here, all the bait fish can corral right at this ending. Now the double bonus here is that we have the set of rocks out after the sandbar, in-between that second top. So the sandbar, second top, rocks—that's an ideal location; bigger baits are bigger shark baits out there to go catch some big fish right off the beach. So the strategy is going to be right here on this first trough, running our baits that are for those two to three feet long fish and under. So our snook, our drum, our smaller shark, our sea trout, our whiting/Brokers what they call them, and I've been right here honestly just five feet out from us. And then with our bigger rigs, we're gonna walk out there; you're gonna see where that sandbar is, right in between the sandbar and the rocks in that second trough at the deepest point in that talk; that's where most of the fish is gonna be holding. All right, I'm gonna walk you guys through the fish finder rig. This should be your go-to when you're out here; it's super versatile; it allows the fish to take it directly to your line without lifting up the weight, and it's great for really, you know, big cut baits, any sort of, you know, frozen baits, smelly baits, really powerful stuff here. And you've got different sizes of weights; these weights can go with the different hook combination. These are just the most common setup in terms of like your pyramid sinker with a certain style hook and a certain style bait. So when you're going for the bigger toothy critters, you want a longer leader, and you're gonna use that bigger cut bait; you're gonna have a bigger hook. So the five OTT off circle hook and the four ounce weight, and you know, moving down to maybe kind of like a snook, red drum kind of rig, you're gonna have like a cup mullet, and that's gonna be up on that like three ounce pyramid sinker and a three OTT J hook. And then you got your smaller rigs where, you know, you got your two ounce and your one ounce with squid and shrimp. The squids gonna be with that wide gap hook; it just elongates the squid strip better, and then you've got your—your classic frozen shrimp on a little one off circle hook. And so all of these can be interchanged; I just want you to take a mental map of how I'm laying these baits with these hooks and these weight sizes because this is generally the combination that you're gonna be working with. You can put the shrimp on a four ounce weight when you need to, when the conditions are rough; you can run cut bait on a two ounce, right? But this is the most common combination that you should be using down here when you're surf fishing. All right, so next up on your rigs are the ready rigs, and while I think you should be using the fish finder rigs the majority of your time, the ready rigs serve as your most convenient option. So these are great if you're just getting started; you should start with if you've never been surf fishing before or if you're taking kids out, family members, you got a big group, right? These will allow you to get, you know, the smaller profile baits like squid and shrimp out deeper because the weights are secured onto the leader itself, which will just improve your casting distance and really get them out there. Now you're gonna lose the sensitivity in the feel of a fish finder rig, but these are great because they're easy; they work effectively; you can change out any hook size you want; simple, done deal. So use these first if it's your first time, use them with kids, and use them with family.
So here a couple specialty rigs that we should walk through as well. We've got the pompano rig, which is great for, you guessed it, pompano, right? But really it's a focus of going after the smaller surf species, you know, maybe the size of your hand up to maybe about, you know, your arm here, and that includes Sheepshead and even the, you know, the croaker and the lighting and the sea trout and so on and so forth, right here, right up next to the surf here, right on the edge. And so this is gonna just bounce right along the bottom, and you're gonna get this bait just right up there in the surf itself, right? And it's just a fantastic setup for targeting even bait fish too, if you're trying to get some bigger cut bait to throw on your fish finder rig; it's just a great setup to get out there and start catching those fish, you know, kind of smaller end of the spectrum. And then we've got the bottom rig; it's also called an Old Dominion rig, and I have one already on here, but I—I know this one's a little complicated for a lot of folks, but what I'm doing is I'm taking a little bit of monofilament or fluorocarbon, I'm tying it onto my hook, maybe, you know, five or six inches, and I'm just doing like a little loop; I'm just taking a loop and just doubling it over, and that's gonna be your little leader end. You can see we already have this side hooked up on the bottom here, and then on the top all you're gonna do is you're just gonna take this loop, you're gonna run it through the tag end of the bottom rig, you're gonna bring it back over and send your hook through. And so I just tie these on with some mono or fluorocarbon; you can get them—they're called Snell's; you can get them free snailed, and all you do is write you what through it, and then you pull the line down and it just cinches right on there. And so these little separators are gonna keep your dual bait separated, and then your leader is going to keep, you know, the bait separated from the wire section to give it more of a finesse approach. And this is a bottom rig for rocky areas, anything with, you know, maybe some coral, things like that that you're gonna get kind of trapped in. It's really popular on the, you know, northern northeastern East Coast and in California where they have those really rocky bottoms. So if that's you, you're gonna get snagged all the time with that fishfinder rig; it's gonna be challenging if you can't find a soft sandy spot. This is a great option when you're trying to surf fish, but you know, there's some obstructions in the way; this is just gonna bounce along the bottom. You can change whatever pyramid sinker you want weight wise here, and the worst thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna get caught here, your bait—your weights gonna knock around a little bit, and you're just gonna tug it free, and most of the time it comes on through. If not, you know, you're gonna lose a weight, but you're not gonna lose the fish. All right, so the cast, you know, using a bigger rod, we've got a big pot here; we're trying to do is get this bait out as far as without actually moving right now, challenging. We've got a 4 out seeker here, nice bit of a—we're going for snuff launch as far as I can without losing; we want to get a big promotion; it's going to be over our shoulder. All right, we're going to talk about drag real quick, and this is super important when we're wheeling in the fish and things like that. We're going to keep—keep it kind of Midway there, but when we're keeping our rods out with the lines in the water with the bait in the water, we want to do is keep that drag to the light as possible that we're going through these bigger business on this cut bait—she's cut bait—drag to be nice and loose, so that when they take it they can go and run with it. We get up what, four or five of sharkon; we want to let him run with it, and we're gonna set the hook after you've burned out some energy, right? So we're keeping these things will point where, you know, you can pull it like this, right? Once you get it before you set the hook, you got to come over; you got to turn your drag back. Now you don't want to tighten it all the way to the top where you can't pull it off, but you want to bring it back for like here where it's still pulling drag, but it's a little bit tougher, sceeto real that guy eggs on them, right? And they're gonna be here in the water, right? We're gonna get that attitude up; we're gonna go over to suck out fear, and we're gonna turn that drag up a bit, right? Not all the way up, right about there, right? When you get a bite, walk up and remove the rod from the rod holder. Now do this gently, and when it's a larger fish really peeling drag, let that thing run for like 30 seconds. Now your drag settings are really loose; going to be kept them loose, right? For these bigger fish, when that fish slows down, you want to start turning your drag tighter, turn it to the right one to two times to get that drag tight enough so you can set the hook. When you set the hook, you're gonna kind like a 45 degrees strike on the rod, just lifting it up from waist height up towards your shoulder, oh, really pulling hard on that to set that hook in there. Now after that hooks looks at you're gonna probably get a fish that's gonna run; I'll let it take some line; if it starts running, just let your drag system do its work and let that fish seal off. When that line stops feeding out, start reeling back, right? You're gonna start pushing against the fish and reeling it in when it slows down, and then when it goes off to take another run, just let your drag system do the work. Once you're sure you want to wade into the water a bit and you didn't want to land that fish by grabbing a leader and pulling the leader in; if you grab the fish in the water, you're gonna lose it, so you want to pull that thing right on the shore through the leader. Always fliers on, nice little black tip. Let's see if we can get a couple more of these bad boys on. Yeah, that five-foot brother is the other day; didn't seem the Landers, right? Yeah, catch these all day. All right, squid is probably the most universal and common surf fishing bait. This is gonna be available all through the west coast, the East Coast, the Gulf, and this is what you want to be using for, you know, kind of that smaller to mid-size species that's gonna be more of a target game fish. So that's gonna be, you know, your croaker, your spotted seatrout or weak fish, potentially snook and drum, everything that's kind of under 24 inches, squids probably the way to go. And you know, there's—it's a little bit complicated, a little bit daunting when you first see it, right? But we want is thin little strips, little triangular strips, right? We're not worried about all this extra junk, so we're just gonna pull this right off, right? We don't need this; this isn't gonna be helpful; it's gonna fall off. You can use it if you start running low on bait, but what you really want our thin triangular strips. [Music] This is what we're looking for; we want to turn these into triangular strips. [Music] This is what we're looking for, and we're gonna put these on. I like to put these on the wide gap hooks; they're smaller, and they also have this gap here so that you can easily double hook them, widen them out, and let them flutter in the water just like that, right? Now shrimp is gonna be your second most common bait, and I like to do this a couple different ways, right? Let's imagine that this is a live shrimp; you don't have any today, but let's imagine it is. I like to use this one on octopus hook, and I go right back here through this tail and I pierce that through; it's gonna be real firm when it's a live shrimp, and it's gonna hold it right there; it's a big clean gap that fish to take it in, and it lets these, you know, little tiny legs move in action, and he's gonna be fighting like that, right? That's how I would do it with a live shrimp. Now you're typically going to be using frozen shrimp, so what I like to do is rig this up on heavier weights, right? When you're gonna be rigging up shrimp, you don't want to just go through the tail, especially with a frozen shrimp; you're gonna—you're gonna get your pants taken down, right? You're gonna lose the shrimp; it's just going to be the tail end. So what we like to do is we like to pierce through here where it's rougher and then pierce through here again and spread this out on the J-hook. Now you can also take that head off because it's gonna come off at some point and throw that down on the end; it kind of clinches the bait down, and you got kind of a big tasty meal here. Now it's not the most effective way to display like a live shrimp; it's not going to be lively, but it's gonna stay on, and that's your biggest battle is keeping your bait on while your rigs are out waiting for a fish.
Moving on to the finger-sized mullets, these can also be, you know, any smaller bait fish and that kind of 5 to 6 inch bait profile. You can do them a couple different ways; we don't want to just throw the whole thing on because it's frozen, it's dead; we wanted to get smelling a little bit. So even if we're gonna go a little bit bigger, let's say we throw the whole thing on here; I like to at least cut off the tail, all right? And let's just use this one on octopus hook; you can go right here through the eyes, and this is gonna hold; it's got a good clearing, right? And you want to cut that tail because you want the blood and the gunk and the smell to be coming out of it, right? Super easy. Now what you can also do, and let's use the J hook for this, is you can get multiple pieces on here and really bunch it up, and this is great if you're kind of going for a shark or, you know, it's in sort of a larger species in that three to four foot range; well, it's great for that; you just get it all on the hook. I'd even kind of cut this down a little bit, right? And we're just trying to get a big pile on here, right? Just like that; that's a great big ball of bait. But you're typically gonna go half and half; typically they're gonna go and hook it through the head like I did earlier or hook it through the tail right here, right? Now that's gonna be your bait; this is good for that kind of, you know, foot and a half to two foot long species that weaves through some of the smaller fish and it gives an ample meal to attract some of the, you know, 2 to 3 foot shark, the larger snook, red drum, things like that, right? Now if you're on the beach with the live bait, you gotta keep that pull, and you got to oxygenate that bait, right? And so we've got—if you were to take any live shrimp or live pin fish, we've got some pin fish in here; we've got an aerator going; it's in a cool cooler; these guys been in here now for about four hours and not a single one has died. It's really important to keep them cool; you don't want to just have them in a bait box; if you want them in a cooler with water and an aerator, right? And this aerator right here is just going on here; they're like 25 bucks, right? And what I'll do with these live bait is we want to keep them active in the water, but we also want to keep update on or hey. So what I'll do is I'll take these one off circle hooks, look Austin there. [Music] And I'm gonna pierce um right through the back of the
Tail here just like that, and that's gonna let this fish woundedly swim around, be frantic, keep that vibrating motion up, as well as stay secure on the line. And it just, it's just probably the most effective way to really bait a live bait critter like this. You can do it with pilchers or greenbacks, um, as well as other smaller, you know, two to four-inch live bait fish. And these are just gonna cast right here in the shallows.
Now, the final and most important is going to be your cut bait. And this is what you're gonna use predominantly. Could potentially get over that. Everything else we've covered here is kind of that bait for that under two-foot fish. This is for everything over. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to cut two-inch wide pieces, one to two-inch wide pieces, and they're gonna be about an inch or so thick. Right. And so we'll start with the tail. The tail, you're gonna leave a little bit longer of a piece, maybe like a three-inch piece, just because it's more narrow; there's less meat on it, so it's gonna look a little bit more like this. But the rest of them are gonna be about two inches to an inch. Right. And you just keep going up all the way to the head, and then you can keep the head too.
Now, with these pieces, right, what we're gonna want to do is we're going to want to get right beneath the back here. You take that 5/0 circle hook and you pierce it down, you push it through the back. Can you break out on the other end? Right through the back there. There we go, just like that, right underneath the dorsal fin. It's got a good about half-inch clearing right there. It's gonna let you set the hook right on the fish, and it's still gonna hold really well. So this is what we're gonna be predominantly using today when we're out here trying to catch these bigger shark and bigger snook. They're gonna be on our bigger rods, and then our smaller rods are gonna have a mixture of these baits for under two-foot fish, so that we can get a good smacking at different species.