re: Mangrove Snapper fishing techniques

Live croaker through the nostril and out the chin works for me. Never needed to bury the hook.

That's what I thought but some of the replies were confusing me

The main point is they are a pain in the arse and will frustrate you to death. But when you have that day that you finally get a school eating good and can limit out, it makes it all worth it.

That’s why I go down and shoot them and let everyone else catch the reds.

Use light fluorocarbon leader with a black hook. Small not necessary if it is hidden good. Im not a big up current man myself. I prefer to throw the chum in the center of the rig and have the fish follow it out to the boat. Up current your bait drifts into the rig and you hang up more when you snag one. I prefer to site fish them and the water needs to be clean green to do that. Your distances are not an issue. Water clarity is.

They're annoying as hell, very smart and finicky. Chum. Small black hook, hide it well. Light flourocarbon leader. Freeline live shrimp.

In FL, have tried cut strips of ballyhoo. Have torn them up on ballyhoo when they wanted nothing to do with live shrimp there. Smaller mangroves are damn good eating.

Mask, Snorkel, Fins and a Speargun have worked in the past.

quote:

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sometimes croakers work, sometimes chunks of bait work

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This is what I always used. Croakers for the win. Use the smallest hook you can and hook the croaker thru the tail so it will go down. Lip hooking will keep it closer to the surface.

All I have is light inshore tackle right now but would like to find some mangroves on calm days. What rod n reels do y’all suggest for starting out? All I use is baitcasters now but I imagine a spinning reel would make this easier.

At what depth do you start catching them? I was at the first rigs out of fourchon earlier this week looking for trout and only found bull reds. Are mangroves hanging out that close?

My list so far:

-Black circle Hooks
-20-30# fluoro leader
-60# braid on main line
-Free line croakas
-pogies or a hungover friend to chum

We had a Freeman pull up next to us Friday and sling some chum using the bat like shown. SMe color and all. Somebody was paying attention.

My dilemma has always been that I get bit more using light tackle, like trout/redfish spinning combos, and smaller hooks, but the bigger ones either abuse me into the rig or straighten out the smaller hooks. A bigger outfit gets fewer bites but affords better odds. And frustrating doesn’t begin to describe seeing them milking around in clear water eating every piece of chum you throw out while shying away from the hooked piece, even when it seems to be buried on a light flouro leader. We did cast net up a 5 gallon bucket of baby pogies about the size of your thumb, beats the heck out of chopping up bigger ones.