Keys To Catching Bait In The Keys

[Music] what's going on everybody it's how to tuesday i got connor here connor runs the podcast he does all the editing and he was also down in the florida keys he got to fish with us on into the blue and saltwater experience and uh got to see a lot of really cool stuff on the way back he had a lot of questions so we're going over some questions uh that he has because maybe it's the same question that you have uh and and we can answer that right away one of the questions that connor was interested in or one of the things he was interested in was the importance of the bait especially on into the blue and uh so when we were doing that we did a lot of different kind of fishing but most of the offshore fishing that we do in the florida keys revolves around the bait so it's obvious if you've never done that kind of fishing um you know maybe there's a lot of questions about why and how do you know where it is and i don't know what are the other questions that you have yeah so i mean i guess yeah so growing up mostly freshwater fishing obviously which maybe people catch bait for some sorts of fresh water fishing but fly fishing obviously you don't really need to catch bait um but that was kind of like i mean how we'd start our day every time down there so i guess one thing i was interested in is like there seemed to always be like a different place we were catching bait in so like i guess what are people looking for like i know one day we were looking for like diving birds another day they were kind of like in this marina that i guess we had heard some intel about um so i guess like for someone that doesn't know a lot about that like what are you looking for when you're looking for bait and i guess also explain like the importance of getting more bait than just what you're going to put on your hook because yeah so offshore fishing in the keys um you mentioned uh fly fishing if we're gonna go fly fishing offshore in the keys that's when we would have the most bait because you know we yeah all the captains everybody knows where the fish are because they are around some sort of structure or where they should be now they're not always there but if you get there and you throw some pilchards out which pilchards if you don't know or a small bait fish maybe maybe about you know four inches long five inches long at on the biggest size three inches long on the smallest size a small bait fish that pretty much everything revolves around we throw the cast net to find these pills or to catch these pilchards and we take giant live wells full of these things blacked out is the term blacked out wells uh to where you can't see the bottom it's black uh as many pillars as you can possibly get in there and we take that out to an area where there's no bait and you start throwing that in you're live chumming and live chumming is exactly that you're taking live fish you're throwing them into the ocean they're swimming around like they don't know where they're going what just happened now they're out here in the middle of the ocean they're swimming around you're throwing some this way you're throwing some that way they're trying to find each other and it it's amazing really that just a little bit of that will bring an entire school up from a wreck 150 feet down you get all these fish up on the surface now you can fly fish for them but in order to keep them up on the surface you have to continue to live chum you have to continue to do this so that's why fly fishing would take the most bait but for we we're going to load up on pilchards no matter what we're doing because it's always a way action brings more action so if you are you know first of all they're great bait almost everything eats a pilchard but also we like to live chum with them and get things going so even if even if we're not really expecting um i don't know for cobia exactly is a good example uh you were out there when we were fishing for cobia um the cobia are gonna be down on this wreck low there's none on the surface we don't see them so we start live chumming uh the snappers are coming up the jacks are coming up lots of actions coming up and all of a sudden the cobia see all this action they come up to and it gives us an opportunity to see what's there gives us an opportunity to see uh which one of these how big they are how many there are is this a place that we even want to stay live chumming can do all of that for you so the bait is super important and you can see some times guides will be on their way out when the bait's really tough they're still trying to catch bait at 11 o'clock that's a bad day that's a tough day because if they get the bait they're going to catch fish if they don't get the bait it's going to be tough catching fish so the bait is super super super important it's not just pilchards there's tons of different baits that we have down there all and you can catch them in a lot of different ways you can you can use sabiki rigs you can throw the cast net you can do all kinds of things to catch the bait the pilchard is just kind of that's the go-to that's that's the go-to and also if you throw the net well and you throw it in the right place at the right time it can be one and done you can throw that net one time you can load up all your wells and you did get to see that too when we went into the when we went into the marina so you also had a question about like how do you find it so yeah so i guess like like let's say someone like knows enough to know how to cast a casting net but they're coming down to the heat the first time like what are they looking for if they have no idea where this bait usually hangs well the simplest way to catch it is to probably look on the ocean side and look for diving pelicans and also white turns the white turns are actually the ones that are really on it but when you when the bait's thick you're going to see pelicans diving and when those pelicans dive there's two types of bait there's glass minnows and then there are pilchards the pilchards are larger and typically what happens or the pilchard i mean the pelicans will dive their head will come immediately up and their neck will go back and they they eat what's in their throat then they'll jump up and do it again a lot of times when it's glass minnows and these are very very small fish that will get stuck in your cast net they don't do well in a live well um because they're fragile and a lot of times the net apparently kills them or whatever they're just not what we're after they're they're too small a lot of times the pelicans will be diving on those but when they dive they'll keep their head down and they'll just start seining out the water uh slowly and their head will just slowly come up so a lot of times if you know you'll see people there'll be tons of birds dive and the captain will watch and watch and watch and watch and watch and be like nah it's not even what we want right because the pelicans that are eating these fish have a certain behavior that you can see from a long distance away and not go in there and waste your time and a lot of times for these boats you know a 36 yellow fin you the bait is in there very shallow it's not shallow for a skiff or a bay boat but for a 36 yellow fan all of a sudden you're you know you're you've got to be careful of the depth so you don't want to make you don't want to get stuck you definitely don't want to get stuck you definitely don't want to go in there where it's really shallow so if you think man i'm not sure that those are pilchards that behavior of the of the pelican is not good we're going to keep going because i know it's super shallow in there and we get stuck and unless i know 100 that those are pilchards in there it's not worth getting stuck so that's one of the one of the things now if you're coming down there and you don't know anybody and you're just hoping to find some bait yeah watch for the birds that's the way to go the captains talk among themselves and they will be some information like we went into a marina and caught some bait we wouldn't have known about that being there had a guide that works out of that marina noticed whoa there's a ton of pilchards in here you know it's a piece of information that was passed on somehow it gets passed on to you you you you hear about it you understand it you go there you catch the bait um that's kind of kept under wraps that's not like super public information um because obviously there's not much room in that marina to go throw the cast net and there was one other boat in there doing it so if there were 20 boats in there it'd be crazy it'd be a show you couldn't do that so um people keep the bait information a lot of times a lot of times where the bait is sometimes is more secret than where the fish are yeah you know because it everything revolves around the around the bait um so let's say like you go down there and like you get it figured out like the first day or there the second day is it likely that that base can be in the same spot or is it through that move it's very likely it'll be in the same spot or nearby if the conditions don't change if it's five out of the south and the next day it's 25 out of the north there's a good chance that you you're not going to see anything there you can't find it or maybe you know as long as the conditions don't change the bait shouldn't move uh very far sometimes it does i mean it's fishing you know anything can happen but uh when things remain pretty consistent the weather the wind um there's no real reason for it to to to move now let's say you had a morning trip and you go out and bait real easy and then the next day you don't have a morning trip you have an afternoon trip and you go back to that same place well there's going to be a difference there that maybe you might not have thought of if you had never been there before and that is that the tide is different so the tide may be really low or really high and the bait will either be there or not and if it's if it's low water and you can see the bait and the birds are diving on it and that's that's great but maybe when the tide comes up that bait gets dispersed or goes someplace where you can't find it or vice versa maybe the low tide causes you problems that may be a problem but at the same time that you found it the day before you know in the same place with the same conditions you should be pretty good okay so last question so one thing i noticed when we were down there sometimes when you find these big piles of bait there's bigger fish in there with them like those jacks that we came across yeah have you ever accidentally caught like a big fish or something like that yeah you you i mean yeah you you do that sometimes i mean there's stories about people throwing um throwing a cast net on a giant tarpon you know it's it's uh it's bad news and uh you do not want to do that it wrecks your net it messes up the tarpon it uh but that's kind of something that would happen not where we're catching bait in the real shallow water there but a lot of times the pilchards are in deeper water and you throw and you let the net sink and sink and sink like that marina is a good example you let the net sink in sink and sink you don't know what's under there you pull that there's a tarpon that's moved up into that school of bait you don't want to catch a tarpon sometimes we catch snook sometimes we catch snappers or something that gets caught a lot you know uh just it just happens to be there when you accidentally throw on top of it um but you know that's by catch that stuff goes goes goes back usually um so that does happen but it's not you'd rather have pilchards yeah for sure they have pilchards all right so how to uh tuesday this week just answering a couple of questions um maybe you had the same question um and maybe you would answer it differently if that's a if that's the case and you have a different answer for any of this we'd love to know about it text at 305-930-7346 you can always text there or you can email podcast saltwaterexperience.com if you have a question that would be good for how to tuesday that would be awesome we're always looking for good questions and good content and especially if it's something that you want to know about hit me up on that text or that email and we will see you next week

Channel: Saltwater Experience

Views: 12,262

Keywords: Saltwater Experience, saltwater fishing, saltwater game, florida keys, florida keys fishing, fishing, islamorada, hawks cay resort, how 2 tuesday, how to tuesday, tom rowland, trp, tom rowland podcast, catching bait, bait in the keys, cast net, casting net, fishing with pilchards, fishing with bait

Id: qogK5RAkWfs

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021