welcome KC! guessing you were probably catching M. littoralis, the gulf whiting, down there.
i prefer targeting them with 1/0 circles and enough peeled shrimp to hide the hook. carolina rig or pyramid slider, usually 1-2oz with short (8-12") leader of 20-30lb mono or fluoro, 1-2 hours either side of low tide. you’ll luck into some bonnethead, sharpnose, and other species of small coastal sharks, so be ready for a drag peel every once in a while. if you’re catching nothing but stingrays, move.
Welcome KC, some outstanding advice there from some outstanding lifetime local fishermen, great start for you from the ‘friendly’ folks at CF.COM.
Return the favor please, and post your results, bad ones too, that is the learning curve here.
Disclaimer: Bwang is smarter than all of us combined. 
This is great, thank you all! Will continue to post. So far my luck has been better off the dock in the creek (flounder/slot reds/trout) than the boat. Hit a trash can slam bottom fishing: stingray, lady fish, shark, pin fish. Also the whiting, trout and bluefish. Trout under corks near banks. Grew up if FL with an aversion to bottom fishing since it always produced catfish. Way more fun/interesting here. Have been using live finger mullet and shrimp.
Going to drop some quartered crab down next.
Huh, I had no idea we had anchovies here.
You did, we just call them the wrong name. I’ve called that a glass minnow all my life.
Yep, me too now that I look closer. I’ve caught reds on those a few times. One of those rare times when they would eat anything. Usually in the Fall as the water temps are falling and bait is harder to find.
That was an old pic, but the left side of the cooler is a cheap guy’s prop tip. Next time you have an inexpensive cooler with a handle or hinge screw that pulls through, run a wood screw onto a washer then all the way thru to the inside, then screw down a wine cork on the exposed part for safety and extra purchase. Even better is through bolts, but the above is quick and lasts a long time
When the stupid plastic hinges give, run those long screws through a strip of fire hose or doubled over denim first for a longer lasting hinge
You guys flatter me unnecessarily. Heck, I just paid off the student loans it took to learn that stuff and I’m almost 41
Everybody knows ToppyBlue is the brains of this operation anyway
Congratz on your new raise.
I love paying stuff off
Looks like a champagne cork. #fancycooler
I like detail oriented people, I think you’re gonna fit in just fine here KC
Nothing like a New Year’s Eve party to set you up with corks for a while!
We have Atlantic silversides here too, they are similar to anchovies in appearance because they have a silver stripe too, but are less laterally compressed (flat side-to-side) than anchovies.
I’ve heard some knowledgeable anglers say that silversides are why sapphire colored lures work well for trout, because that’s the iridescent color of a silverside’s back, and they are a major prey item because they follow grass lines without going into the marsh, which is exactly what trout do too.
the rest of you pipe down. let wang do his thing.
congrats on the student loan.
nice toppyblue drop in - whata character.
Toppyblue is still posting, but I set up a Word file on his computer that he types all of his blogposts and nonsense in now. He just doesn’t realize he’s not online.
Alright, I’m naïve to a lot… but I always thought toppy blue was bolbie/polly ball/ Robert… ?
All that aside, good stuff on this thread.
My son had a buddy from school stay with us this weekend and we spent a lot of time with lines in the water. We did ok with live bait off the boat. Some keeper trout, lots of undersized trout and reds.
Dawn patrol
