Welcome to the Salt Strong family! This Inshore Grail will show you the lures that I have found to allow me to catch the most quality redfish, snook, and big trout with the least amount of effort over the past few years.
Prior to focusing on this short-list of lures, I found myself feeling overwhelmed with an overfilled tackle box full of way too many lure types for me to possibly know how to effectively use.
My biggest increase in fish catching came when I decided to focus on being extremely good at working just one lure type… and that type of lure was soft plastic jerk baits because of they can be effectively used in so many different situations:
- Prospecting a shallow grass flat (can easily be rigged weedless)
- Sightfishing (allows for a long cast and quite water entry)
- Skipping up under mangroves and docks (most soft plastics skip extremely well, and it’s less costly when you do hook into a fish that simply refuses to come out and breaks you off)
- Topwater
The next revelation occurred when I focused on finding the right lure to most effectively fish a specific water depth. For example, I’d previously take out a few rods and have a few different options for fishing the depth of water that I planned to target. Now, I simply use one hook or jig head that allows me to quickly and easily experiment with different sizes/colors until the optimal match is found without ever having to re-tie lines.
More importantly, I found that specific colors and sizes consistently worked during the different seasons and that the same trends of what works best was consistent on both coasts of FL.
Not only did my catches of slot redfish, snook, and really big trout increase, but I found that I was finally able to outperform live bait fishing as a weekend warrior who simply couldn’t always know exactly where to catch bait and where the good fish were holding. This focus on artificials allowed me to spend more time actually fishing because I no longer had to spend the first part of the day catching live bait, and then then final part of the evening scrubbing the boat due to all the junk the cast net brought aboard.
With that said, here are links to the baits I’ve found work the absolute best in the 3 water depths that you’ll need to be ready for when pursuing redfish, snook, and big trout on the flats:
> Shallow Running Lures (1 to 3 ft Depth)
> Jigs (3+ ft Depth)
> Topwater Lures
In your service,
Luke Simonds – Chief Fishing Addict at Salt Strong
P.S. – Feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments area of the respective pages. We’ll gladly reply to them as quickly as possible.
Hey Steve,
It’s great to hear from you!
I use spinning reels exclusively when fishing the flats because they do better at handling lures/baits of all different sizes/weights. For them, I most often use 10 lb PowerPro braid (green) for the main line and then use a fluorocarbon leader of 20 lbs (for redfish and trout) to 30 lbs (when I’m going after snook).
If targeting big snook near heavy cover, I typically use 20 lb braid and a 50 to 60 lb leader.
Here’s a video in the Inshore Slammer that gives some more details: http://v2.saltstrong.com/c001/module-1/fishing-lines.
Luke, first off, I’d like to say thank you for your helpful videos and information. I enjoy them thoroughly. I’ve recently moved from WI, where I would do a lot of walleye fishing. A lot of the fish locating and structure techniques are similar but I’ve never had to deal with tides. I’m becoming very frustrated by notBeing able to locate red fish. In your opinion, what are your thoughts on the best tides to be fishing. I did catch a nice keeper trout the other night (just over 19″) but have yet to catch a snook or red fish. I’m using the same baits, hooks, etc, but seem to catch an awful lot of catfish and not my target species. thank you, Eric Mellor
Hey Eric, congrats on your nice trout catch! Thanks for the nice comment and for posting the great question. I’m actually in the process of making a video specifically about tides and currents, and I’ll send you a link to it once it’s complete.
For now, my short answer is that I put more focus on Currents than Tides when determining the best time of the day to fish… incoming tides are just as effective as outgoing. The reason I focus more on Current is because that is what brings food to the fish, so it’s when they are most focused on feeding. For most inshore fishing spots, the bite is best at the maximum current speed (in between two drastic changes in tide levels). If fishing an inlet with very strong current (like Sebastian Inlet), then the max current is a bit too strong so I aim to fish those spots at the change (the end of the outgoing is my favorite for passes/inlets).
So when reading a tide chart, I’m more interested in seeing how big and fast the change in water level is (aka… Current) than I am in the actual level of the water at any given time. After getting an idea of the Current outlook, then I’ll use the water level projections to determine what areas will have the depth of water that I feel will hold the most fish.
For redfish, focus your search in shallow grass flats (1 to 3 ft of water) that has at least one of the following (healthy grass, mangrove roots/overhangs, potholes, oysters, points, etc.)… once there, scan for the 3 B’s (birds, bait, and boils).
For snook, focus on the same areas listed above for redfish, but make sure they have a decent amount of current to increase the odds of finding good snook.