Transcription
Good morning, beautiful beach bums. So glad to be back here on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Just got back home this week after being back home in my hometown for a couple of weeks. So glad to be here, back at the salt. Today, I'm excited because I'm gonna talk to you guys about what surf fishing really is. This might offend a few of you, or it could help you be a better surfer, or person, woman, man, whatever, girl, boy—we're talking about that and whiting fishing, how you can catch more whiting and do that more consistently.
I am at the Gulf State Pier, but we are not pier fishing; sorry, we are still surf fishing today. So once the sun gets up, I'll see you guys in a minute. It's late fall, early winter, and that means some fat, juicy whiting. So today, that is our primary target, and the best rig to use is basically a pompano rig. But what I like to do with my pompano rigs when we're targeting whiting is really downsize. This rig that we're using today, this is 10-pound mono, this is a size six circle hook, and this is the Owner Mootoo light circle hook, and this thing works fantastic for catching whiting. Love it. I have just a bead on here; this one I have a purple bead. I'm running two rigs today; the other one is exactly the same except it has an orange bead. Sometimes you can do no bead, you can do a float, whatever you want, whatever you want to try. It's not going to hurt, I promise. And then I've got that running up to a swivel, and I don't know what size swivel this is; it may be 70, 80-pound, I'm not sure, not too big. And it's going to my main line, which is 10-pound Power Pro braid. All of this is on a little bit smaller setups. This is a size MM battle reel. Both rods are actually Steelhead Rise. I really have discovered I love using these Steelhead Rise rods. This one over here is the Star, and the one that we were just looking at is a Wright & McGill. I got it at Dick's, but this is a Star Ariel, nine and a half foot. One over here is nine foot, the Wright & McGill, and the reel on this one is the Penn Pursuit III 2500. Pretty good reel for the money.
We're just using tiny pieces of fresh, dead shrimp today. I do have some Fish Bites, but usually you get quicker bites this time of year from whiting with just shrimp, and you don't have as many catfish and pin fish and all kinds of other stuff. I don't think I mentioned I am using a one and a half ounce weight. I try to go as low as possible when I'm using these whiting rigs. I generally will use a one ounce, but there's a little bit of waves, a little bit of surf today, so I did step it up just a bit to the one and a half. So hopefully that will hold. I will be keeping fish today; we do need some fish for this week for a few meals. And whiting—it was great to feed my daughter, and at least it's real easy to just throw in the oven and cook it for lunch or dinner for her. Great protein, all natural, you can't beat it for your little ones.
There we go, we got a fish. Does not feel very big. There were some croaker here yesterday, and I think that maybe what we have here is a croaker. See if we can get this guy in here. It looks like a little croaker. First fish of the day, and we got Fred waiting on them. I try not to feed Fred; that is not good for the fish or the birds, but he's probably gonna get him. Oh, swim away, buddy, swim away. Do your best, huh. Victory. Oh wait, yeah. Oh, he's still chasing them, he's still chasing it. Yeah, you ran the wrong way, dude. Oh, he got him. Can't do much about it. Don't feed the birds; this is why they do that. Here we go. [Music] Here we go, a little bit better fish. Let's see, might just be another croaker, but all right. First whiting of the day. I know we've got some bigger ones around here, so we're probably gonna let this guy go. First whiting of the day; he's not terrible. I've kept this size before, but we're looking for bigger ones. To it, trying to get away from this, trying to get you back, so the bird don't eat your man. [Music] Alright, swim free. Did we, did we succeed? I think we did. Thumbs up. Here we go. I thought we had a fish; I wasn't sure. Had some slack in it. Let's see. Hmm, here he feels like he's got a little bit of weight on this one, a little bit of fight. Yeah, I think we got a good whiting here. Yes, we got to keep her, keep her whiting. Heck yes, this is what we came for right here, beautiful. We got our first keeper whiting of the day. Beautiful, tasty fish. This is honestly one of the—I mean, it's a good keeper size; he's probably right at 12 inches, but we've been catching them a lot bigger this time of year, so hopefully we get some studs today. But excited to have her, first one in the cooler.
There are all these pelicans right here beside me, and a group of them, of course, just decided to fly off, and one got caught in my lines, two lines to be exact. Fortunately, by some miracle, he was able to get untangled from both, but I'm moving because on the other side of the pier there doesn't seem to be any pelicans. Figured I would take this opportunity to go ahead and talk a little bit about what I mentioned at the beginning of the video: what surf fishing really is about. There are two primary species when you're fishing the Alabama Gulf Coast in the surf, pretty much the whole northern Gulf Coast of the surf; there are two main species, and that's pompano and whiting. So when you talk about surf fishing, that's usually one of the two species that you're targeting, and surf fishing is really the best way to target those species. You can catch them other ways; you know, you catch pompano different ways and from a boat, and you can use different things and, you know, go after them in different areas, but the best way to target them primarily is surf fishing. That goes for whiting as well. You know, kingfish, which we have three different species of kingfish, but we call them all whiting. You've got the Gulf kingfish, northern kingfish, and southern kingfish, but you will find the Gulf kingfish mostly in the surf zone, like that's—you're gonna catch that as much in the bays and aside from in the surf. So the mistake a lot of people make is they are targeting the wrong things. They think surf fishing, they think ocean, they think saltwater, they think big fish, and they use really heavy gear. You may be one of them, or they use really heavy stuff, and you may or may not have success. You might hook up on stuff; there, there, you know, we catch big fish, but they're not generally the best target species. A lot of times when we catch these big black drum, big redfish, usually we're targeting pompano or whiting, and we are fortunate enough to catch one of these bigger species. It happens pretty regularly, but they're just not the best fish to go out and say, "Hey, I'm gonna go surf fishing, and I'm gonna go catch a bunch of bull reds." I mean, you can, and there are areas where that may be conducive. Yes, of course, we do get runs of these other species that we can target from the beach, like trout, the redfish, black drum, flounder, bluefish, but generally when I'm, when I'm targeting those, I'm usually still targeting whiting or pompano, and I'm just prepared to throw a different lure or to put a different piece of bait out there for those opportunities if they do present themselves. But generally, you figure that out when you're fishing for the whiting or the pompano; you find out what's going on, you know what, what's present. Because a lot of times you catch these other species. The point I'm trying to make is this: if you come out here and you expect what should be expected—pompano, whiting—whatever time of year, because we can catch pompano most of the year. I mean, of course, there are better times, and you know, spring is definitely the hot spot, but we can catch pompano out here all year long, whiting all year long. But again, there are better times, and we get bigger whiting at different times of the year, but you can always come out here and do well with those species if you kind of have an idea of what's going on—those primary two species—if you do both, you'll be six more successful, honestly, with the other species that are coming through by not limiting yourself by focusing on a species that isn't as present as the other fish that are. Hopefully that makes sense to you; hopefully that'll help you catch more fish. I just see so many people that come out and they just are using way heavy gear, they're just wait, you know, expecting something that there's an expecting Moby Dick or giant, you know, I don't know, man, it's crazy. I mean, yeah, there's land-based shark fishing; I get that; that's a whole different ballgame from what this is. I mean, that is a completely different type of fishing; it really is. So I get that, and that's effective, but for surf fishing in general, to catch fish, to, you know, really throw in the cooler, if you limit your targets to the main to surf species that you're coming out here to catch—whiting and pompano—I promise you'll have more success; you'll catch more fish.
Alright, now that we're off our soapbox about surf fishing, let's see if we can catch a few more whiting. That's what we're here to do today. We have moved to the other side of the pier; there are fortunately no pelicans around there for whatever reason. Hanging on the west side of the pier, you just made a move, just got baited out, and I put a Fish Bite piece, the Fish Bite on here, and you got a decent hit. First one I've seen in a while. Think it's a whiting. Yes, sir, we'll take him. Again, he's not a big juicy one; we know we've got them around here, but we are limited on size today. We'll take the croaker, but he's definitely not huge. Every fish and every bite that we've caught at this new spot has been on this left rod, which is a little more left of this point, so I'm gonna rotate that other rod to this side. Maybe they seem to be liking this side of the point for some reason. See if we get some more activity. All right, I was turning the camera off because I had it on because I just missed a big hit, but we got another good one. This is a good fish right here, good, good fight. This is what we were coming out here for today, and we just missed one on the rod that I just moved to the left of this, so seems to be a smart move there. Is that, that's a good one. Still not huge, but good; your head keeper size, and we had a big hit on the other rod over there, so we're making progress; we're getting somewhere. This bite has been tough today. That I just got a bite on this rod, which I just moved this from the right side to the left. Just a small change, but it's just more to the left at this point where I was getting most of the action on this rod. I do that a lot; I actually move stuff around like that quite regularly when I'm pompano fishing, whiting fishing. You know, we start catching fish to one side of my spread; I will most certainly focus more rods on that side, and it pays off. Full out of the town; it's crazy how like a change from there to there, which is probably, I don't know, 30, 40 feet, makes that big of a difference, but sometimes it does. That what slack? I wasn't looking; should be on the camera, whatever that looks like, but I did not see it. Yeah, this one feels good. I just look; I was rebaiting that hook, looked over, and it was slack. Yeah, this looks like, it feels like a good fish. It was like a good fish. Yes, yes, juicy; that's a juicy one. This is what we wanted today; these beat these thicker, you know, 12, 12 inches, 12 to 14 inches, like that's what I was expecting today mostly, but you get what you get, man; that's nature. Yet another, put some slack, and it starts swimming in. Let's see what we get. Oh, there it is. Yeah, it feels like a piece of fish; I think that's a whiting, not a croaker. There we go; he'll go in the box. Yes, this might be last fish, might be last fish. I was trying to get one, one big one, but he might be it. We'll see; we'll give it another few minutes; we'll see. Couldn't get on the studs like we wanted to this morning, but it had a fantastic time. Got plenty of fish for my daughter and probably enough for me and my wife to have a meal. Stoked about that. Hopefully this video will help you out; hopefully it'll help you narrow down your focus when you're out here surf fishing and understand what you're going for. And if you are targeting whiting, using some of these rigs, using some of these tactics, moving around, looking for structure, fishing close—I didn't really talk much about that, but I having plenty of other videos as well—but I definitely want to fish close when you're looking for whiting. But find that zone, find where they're hanging; always important. Yeah, thanks for watching the video, and as always, you stay booming.