So, finally got in some fishing as most of my time recently has been tied up with work or bad weather. Didn’t put too many in the boat, but really enjoyed the time on the water alone. Fished from 1:30 or so until 7. Water temp 84-86, in and around YHC and Clouter. Took shelter from a little thunderstorm underneath 526 with some nice folks out test driving a cool little Pathfinder skiff.
All fish caught on cut mullet, carolina rigged. Loaded up the minnow bucket with the cast net, but had a very hard time keeping them alive throughout the day.
Can I get some help identifying this fish… Looks like a Black Drum to me without the enlarged forehead… juvenile perhaps?
nice whiting, try targeting them with shrimp and small cut fish, they eat better than anything else inshore except for sheeps and flounder IMO.
as for the bait, don’t overload the minnow bucket- they just deplete the oxygen way too fast. my max is about 2doz FMs or 3doz MMs per bucket, and they need to stay in the water any time the boat’s not moving. makes for a bunch of flo-trolls sitting around if you don’t have a live well, but they’ll live a lot longer. pro tip: finger mullet and shrimp get along fine, but mudminnows and shrimp… not so much.
Whiting are easy to fillet and taste really good fried. I use a small size 1 hook with a piece of shrimp about the size of my finger nail. For the bait, I have a cool bucket that I bought which is insulated in styrofoam and has a battery operated aerator. I keep small ice packs in the cooler and toss them in every so often. I also changed out the water every few hours. I’ve kept almost 3 dozen finger mullet alive for about 7 hours with this method.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Thanks for the clarification with the whiting. Just didn’t look like one from the photos I’ve seen of whiting.
For the bait, I have a live well on the boat, but it is not recirculating. Would it behoove me to keep the pump running and just let the overflow run out of the drain at the top of the well? I’m not sure how many minnows or FM I’d lose through that drain hole though. It seems to me that when I do put them in there instead of the minnow bucket, they do hold up better, but also, they tend to swim around in the bottom of the well. So would I really be losing a lot of them?
Put a small strainer on the live well drain. West marine or any fish store should have one. I may have a couple laying around still I’ll check for you. What does your live well drain look like?
“Work is for people who don’t know how to fish”
2005 180 Flats Fox w/115 Yamaha 4 stroke
1996 1436 War Eagle w/25 Evinrude 2 stroke
DDS, I thought about that too… However, there is another hole, not quite sure why it’s there, that presents a problem with that as well. I’ll take a photo and post this afternoon. Thanks for the advice, as always!
quote: I have a live well on the boat, but it is not recirculating. Would it behoove me to keep the pump running and just let the overflow run out of the drain at the top of the well?
That’s exactly what I do, but with a strainer over the overflow. In hot weather or with a lot of bait I never turn it off. You can also get an adjustable timer switch that will run the pump X amount of time every X minutes. They work good, but I just let mine run all the time. A strainer is necessary for small baits, yes they will swim out the hole.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
