Fishing School
Finding Fish [95/5]
Welcome to the Advanced Level module of the Insider Club Curriculum!
These lessons will help ensure that you can always put yourself in good spots to catch inshore saltwater fish even if fishing areas you’ve never been to before.
And please know that the strategies you’ll see apply to you regardless if you’re fishing by foot, kayak, or boat.
Note: Make sure to watch to the end because you’ll see some tricks for finding great spots from online maps even in areas with very murky water.
Finding Spots In The Warmer Months
Finding Spots In The Cold Months
Related Links:
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How much of spring and fall is a guessing game before you see where the bait and birds are at on the water?
The most birds and bait will most often be holding in zones with the most structure with good water flow. So the same types of spots that we teach for finding in Smart Fishing Spots will most often hold a good amount of bait/birds too.
I fish a lot of marsh systems. Thank you for the insight.
Glad to see that you enjoyed this lesson!
Great info
Luke , Joe,
Great video, I’m always learning something new. Thank you. Our Ft Lauderdale Chapter will be going to Chokoloskee May 16-18. I’m bringing my wife and our two seat kayak. I am a beginner. I see from the satellite there are some small islands directly west of the resort Choloskee RV Park. Any thoughts on where to focus my attention?
For the Spring season, it’s all about finding zones with lots of food. So pick a zone that has a variety of structure in a variety of depths that you can access. And focus on the area(s) that have the most baitfish and/or feeding birds… the bait will move daily, so a combination of map reading and on-the-water looking is key to get consistent results.
Wow, that was a quick response Thank you for your advice.
Good info. TY.
We’re so glad to see that you enjoyed this lesson Donn. Thanks for making time to post the nice comment.
How do you decide when the current flow is too much to fish and you should move out of a main channel to a place with less current flow. Is there any rule of thumb? For example, when should I fish the bridge at Snow’s cut in NC and when should I not fish the bridge since the current is too fast?
My rule of thumb is that if the current is slow enough for me to feel the bottom with my Prawn USA jigs, then I’ll be fishing it. But once the current flow is to strong to feel what’s going on down there, I’m going to a different spot out of the main current flow.
There is a bridge in Snow’s Cut near Carolina Beach NC which gets to 20+ ft deep. Is there a depth I should be targeting to fish in or should I try to get bait/lures down to the 20 ft depth? Not sure if fishing the less deep places next to a deep channel is better
It’s more about structure than depth. When fishing bridges, I like using Prawn USA lures rigged on jigheads that can allow me to feel the bottom for structure while catching fish (or if you have a good depth finder, that can show the zones with structure too). Here’s an example of how to get into a lot of action around bridges: https://www.saltstrong.com/articles/bridge-fishing-with-new-shrimp-lure/
Just joined today. There’s a lot of really great information here, but I have to say I’m a bit disappointed. Living in near Ozello and there is absolutely no assistance from the 1 ft. contour at Ozello, Fort Island, or Yankeetown creeks/marshes. The great detail of information largely surrounds boat channels, which is not an ideal situation to fish from a kayak or shore/wade. I understand that this is likely very difficult to map and high volume areas make sense, but all the videos and promos show such excellent detail that it seems like the information should be available regardless of the region. I’m back to comparing Google maps and taking educated guesses on how quickly the depth changes. I will compliment the fishing schools, as it is very informative and will help guide my upcoming trips. Using what I learned should improve my catch rate, but I was hoping for at least some guidance in the creeks
Melvin