Had a good weekend on the water. We go for 2 days. Wanted to share some information after 8 years of shrimping, just some observations. Not at all the guru just trends. It is a lot to go and not catch anything.
Depth Finder: Finally after years took some picts of the depth finder when they were thick. Did 4 test poles at a new location and threw thinking the water didn’t look right, wind yadda yadda-“Lets move don‘t like it“. Lady Luck throws first so I thought I had a dang skate due to the dark color of the horn but it was packed to the top with shrimp! My girl self could barely pull it in! I couldn’t put my shrimp net necklace on fast enough for the next pole! Rodeo Time! First Pict.
Wind: Threw that theory out. North to North East at 10-15, normally would not go but if you can get the front of the boat toward the wind the driver can correct easily, we wrap the poles. We have always had our backs to the wind to throw but now find the bait floats from pole to pole in current and will set up accordingly.
Channels: Saturday. We set up slightly away from a channel with a pluff/shell mix from a 2ft-7ft range and caught a mix of large, med and small on Saturday. Sunday set poles up on a start of 5ft toward low…do the math, at the end of the day throwing in 9 feet! They were a lot larger and in the channel and thick.
Water clarity: It must be stained! Will never shrimp in clear water again – last year.
Tide Height: If the tide and moon are high the current is really swift-last year, shrimped a full moon. A 7 foot full moon tide dumps a ton of water quickly with a ton of current. It is good to see a tidal height of 5 to 5ft6. Not a super strong current.
Screaming Sea Gulls: Every time we have caught large shrimp in a location there have been the screamer seagulls. Every dang time. Shrimp police.
DNR: Had a check at one landing and all went well. Had an older cooler that we filled with water to measure and it worked out perfect. They were really nice, just checked net sizes, poles and licens
Nice cooler of shrimp too! Learning how to use my fish finder has really improved my shrimp catching, especially deep holing.