Brandon Sauls believes that live shrimp will trigger bites from speckled trout, even when nothing else works. While he’ll often catch specks on lures or minnows, shrimp are their preferred food and well worth the effort and expense to get.
The only real negative about fishing with live shrimp is that everything else in the marsh loves them, too. They don’t last long while the water is warm and loaded with bait thieves that are faster than trout and can wipe out dozens of live shrimp in an hour. But by early November, the waters have cooled enough — into the low 60s — to send bait thieves south, leaving live shrimp around long enough to entice trout bites.
Sauls primarily fishes live shrimp under a float rig with a pencil float rather than a popping float. The pencil float has less resistance, and trout that miss will often return and bite again. Sauls uses a bobber stopper and bead above the float to adjust the depth. He uses a 1/2-ounce egg sinker below the float to pull the bait down to the selected depth. A 12- to 15-inch fluorocarbon leader, with a gold No. 6 treble hook, is tied to a swivel below the float.
Sauls said shrimp must be hooked carefully to stay alive. He hooks shrimp from side to side, lightly under the horn, and takes care not to hit either of the dark spots in its head. Sauls said the dark spots are the shrimp’s brain and central nervous system, and puncturing one of them will kill the shrimp.
Sauls occasionally fishes live shrimp on a 1/8- or 1/4-ounce Mission Fishin’ jighead. The shrimp is hooked from the bottom of its head up through its horn and can be cast and slowly retrieved like a grub. This is a way to quickly check an area for feeding fish and works well for red and black drum.
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