Several months ago I wrote a story about fishing for summer trout and puppy drum using live shrimp.
These fish rarely turn down shrimp, but what do you do when there aren’t any live shrimp? I’ve had at least a dozen calls and e-mails asking this question and our water is cooling to the point the shrimp are leaving, so what to do?
Here are a few suggestions:
• For anglers who absolutely insist live bait is the only way to go, they’re going to continue to look for live bait. Some tackle shops with live shrimp usually stop selling them between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• When they can’t get live shrimp, some anglers turn to mud minnows. That works sometimes, but there are days when the fish don’t want mud minnows (the fish are thinking ribeyes and being offered chopped steak). In that case, sometimes you can tempt such fish with artificial shrimp lures.
Artificial shrimp are what I really want to discuss. All that’s required of an angler is learning to use them, and I’m only going to talk about soft-plastic shrimp.
Numerous brands exist, so I haven’t tried them all. But I’m sure some of what I’ve learned will work with shrimp shapes I haven’t used.
As with any lure, the purpose of using shrimp shapes is to get a fish’s attention and tempt it into striking. Movement, scent, color, size and sound all play a part.
Most of the shrimp lures on the market today are oriented to move forward. Real undisturbed shrimp move slowly. However, when startled, shrimp pop their tails and jump backwards.
Shrimp also have the ability to hover just above the bottom and then slowly sink in a near-vertical movement.
However, strong currents sweep shrimp, and they’ll grab onto marsh grass and bottom growth to keep from being swept where they don’t want to go. Anglers can learn a lot about how shrimp move by watching them in a bait tank.
I haven’t noticed any particular odors that live shrimp produce, but many bait companies offer scented shrimp and spray-on shrimp scents.
Once I fished with Dr. Bill Carr, inventor of Fishbites, and he explained scents that attract fish are made for fish and to travel through water, so I should not be surprised that I can’t smell them through the air. We caught lots of fish using Fishbites bait strip pieces, and I couldn’t detect any significant odors. Because I occasionally allow a scented bait to sit on the bottom or hang beneath a cork and get strikes, I’ll accept that scent definitely can be an attractant for shrimp-shaped lures.
Color also is definitely a key for shrimp-like lures. We’ve all had days when the only difference between lures that caught fish and lures that didn’t was the color.
I’ve read quite a bit about colors in water and listened to many successful anglers but would be remiss to present myself as understanding this topic. Instead, let me note my favorite color is white or pearl. Those two colors seem to work in clear and dark water.
In recent years, “new penny” has surpassed the variations of chartreuse to become my second favorite color and dropped chartreuse to third.
Sizes of lures also play a big part in success, although size probably isn’t as important during the warm-up in spring and cool-down in fall when everything is feeding. Fish simply eat a lot of food in the fall and will consume almost anything that swims in front of them.
However, when the water warms into the 80s or cools into the lower 60s (or below), some advantages occur by using different size lures.
During extremes of temperature — when fish become lethargic — I’ve had good results simply by switching to smaller lures. Better results also occur with larger or smaller live shrimp or minnows. Bait thieves will attack almost anything smaller than themselves, but sometimes gamefish — especially speckled trout — just don’t seem willing to put forth the effort to chase down a really active larger bait.
Puppy drum don’t seem to slow as much as trout during extreme heat or cold, but days occur when going smaller helps catch reds.
Sound is another variable we probably never will understand fully. Much like scent, sound travels through water differently than it does through air.
If you’re curious, hold your head under water and have someone work a rattling bait, popping cork or rattling cork past you. Differences even exist when using plastic, glass, brass or tungsten beads. I’d expect different bobber stoppers also muffle or exaggerate the clicks of beads.
Good and confused? This discourse should have at least provoked some thought. I started with shrimp then added variables. Now it’s time to get back to how they work with shrimp.
As long an angler has at least 2 feet of water to fish, I like to use popping and rattling corks when fishing plastic shrimp. They’re supposed to mimic sounds fish make chomping on shrimp and shrimp make trying to escape. I might fudge this depth a little shallower in the spring and fall when fish feed heavily and don’t spook as easily.
Don’t overdo it though — a big pop or rattle can scare fish already spooky from being in shallow water.
I rig a shrimp to be 8 inches to 1 foot above the bottom. If noticeable current is obvious, I let it carry the cork and rattle — or pop it occasionally. The timing of popping the cork varies with the time of year and the intensity of how the fish are feeding.
When they’re feeding heavily, I pop it often to create lots of attention and competition. When the bite is slower, I pop it less frequently but make a bit more movement with it, which moves the shrimp a little more to attract attention.
Capt. Noah Lynk uses the rattle of the cork to entice fish into eating lures. He prefers the Cajun Thunder Rattle Float with brass beads.
He said the splash of the cork resembles the splash of feeding fish, while the click of the brass beads resembles a sound shrimp make when startled and jumping backward. There might be room for a little discussion regarding the actual sounds the cork and rattles make, but the proof is in the fish box and Lynk is successful with this technique.
Other anglers like to fish shrimp at the bottom. Capt. Matt Wirt uses Berkley Gulp shrimp on weedless Gitzem jigheads from Barefoot Tackle in the shallow waters of Buzzard Bay.
Less than 1 foot of water remains at many places in this bay during low tidal periods, so he can’t use a popping or rattling cork.
But the weedless Gitzem jighead’s hook always points up, allowing him to “pop” a shrimp lure, then pause in a position where a hungry fish has the hook in its mouth as soon as it picks up the lure. The action of the lure and its scent attract fish.
Capt. Stuart Caulder inserts a rattle into plastic shrimp tails to attract fish. He used the technique recently while drifting shrimp with the tide near Masonboro and Mason inlets and caught trout and drum. I caught a pair of flounder at a creek where the current was slow enough the shrimp bounced along the bottom.
Caulder likes to use a 1/4-ounce D.O.A. shrimp and slip the rattle into its tail. He casts, then twitches the lure while allowing it to be swept along by the tide.
Several captains prefer the Betts Billy Bay Jumping Halo Shrimp (a lure that uses a worm hook with the eye on top of the head to give it a jumping motion). They pop it across the water quickly, making the lure appear to be a spooked shrimp that’s fleeing a predator.
I’ve taken some of these tips and modified them, including reversing the hook to place the point near the head with the eye coming out near the middle of the back.
With scented shrimp lures that don’t have hooks or weights, a variety of hooks will work. With the D.O.A. Shrimp, it’s simply a matter of removing the hook and re-inserting it backwards.
I sometimes trim a notch into the lure’s belly below and behind where the eye exits the back so the tail will bend underneath the jighead when I jerk sharply. This setup mimics the backward movement of a startled shrimp. Inserting a rattle into the tail of the shrimp to produce the “click” they make when they’re startled and jump backwards also helps. Although inserting rattles works with regular and scented lures, it often weakens the plastic body to the point the lures rip after only a strike or two.
However, when the bite is slow, tearing up a few lures is easy payment for catching fish.
Anglers usually have a favorite make of lures, probably because some work better for individual anglers than others. The most successful fishermen carry a mixture of shrimp lure shapes in many sizes, colors, weights, plus scented and unscented lures.
By experimenting and using a little creativity, these lures will catch fish, even after shrimp have left the area during late fall. Then it’s up to anglers to find the best ways to tempt fish with what’s available in our tackle boxes.
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