How To Catch Pinfish For Bait Without A Net Or Trap [Video Tutorial]

Imagine how great it would be to easily catch pinfish for bait without having to get soaked throwing a cast net or wasting time/energy loading a pinfish trap.

Some days it’s simply too much of a hassle to catch pinfish with a cast net (not to mention nothing is worse on cold mornings than getting soaked with salt water).

Moreover, most of us don’t have the luxury of having a pinfish trap sitting on a honey hole prior to your fishing trip either.

Which is why we put this article and video together to teach you a great way to catch tons of pinfish, while having tons of fun with your entire family.

Best of all, this can be done almost anywhere pinfish live, and it can be successfully done by even the newest and youngest anglers out there…

And as you’ll see at the end of the video below, casting isn’t even required…

How to Catch Pinfish on Hook and Line

I’m not sure exactly why, but pinfish absolutely love to bite Berkley Gulp baits.

I fish for snook, redfish, and trout with soft plastic jerk baits 90%+ of the time, and I’ve experimented with every brand I can get my hands on.

Throughout the past 5 years of soft plastics fishing, baits from Berkley Gulp consistently get more strikes from pinfish (and game fish too, but that’s for a different article).

Fortunately, these Gulp baits are very tough allowing for them to withstand most of the pinfish and puffer attacks.

However, there’s always a time when either a Gulp Shrimp or Jerkbait is too beat up/ripped up to be used effectively for game fish…

But instead of throwing them away, I recommend saving them to use for catching pinfish, because it’s so much easier and cleaner than using cut shrimp, which was the method I was taught when really young that got me addicted to saltwater fishing (you will see what I am talking about in the video tutorial below).

Overall, pinfish are the easiest to find and the most common catch, but this bait catching method will also reward you with grunts, pigfish, croakers, and pretty much anything else that feeds on small shrimp/minnows on grass flats.

In fact, I’ve actually caught keeper trout and small redfish on these pinfish rigs.

“The Salt Strong Pinfish Catching Process”

The process is extremely simple… all you have to do is find a grass flat that is holding pinfish, and drag a small chunk of any Berkley Gulp on a small hook along the bottom (the smaller the size the better).

And you don’t even have to do any special retrieve… here are the three most common retrieve techniques I’ve seen work:

1. Let it sit on the bottom
   • When on a good flat, you can often just cast out the line and let it sit… the very end of the tutorial video is an example of this in action
2. Bounce along the bottom
   • This is my personal favorite method to use… I cast out and let it fall all the way to the bottom, and then slowly lift the rod up about a foot, and then let if fall back and retrieve the slack line before doing it again (it will most often get struck on the fall back)
3. Drag along the bottom
   • This is the easiest method and is best for the really young anglers who are not ready for working the rod in the bouncing method (I’ve seen a 3 year old out catch us adults using this simple “slowly reel it in” retrieve method)

Click on the video image below to see exactly how it works (and stay tuned to the very end…you won’t believe what happens during my sign-off)

Conclusion

For a fun and rewarding family outing full of fish catching, this style of bait catching can be a great choice given its simplicity and the fact that even the youngest of anglers can easily catch tons of fish.

In fact, I’ve been on multiple island camping trips where we arm 3 to 8-year-olds with a few rods and some cut up Gulp shrimp, and they catch more pinfish and grunts than we could possibly even use… and they had an absolute blast doing it!

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions about this technique of catching pinfish by leaving a comment below or sending an email to fish@saltstrong.com.

Click here for tips on how to rig a live pinfish to catch a snook.

P.S. – If you think your angler friends or fishing networks would like to see this, please Tag them or Share this with them. You Rock! Pa-POW!