First Week of March

Hey guys and gals! My name is Brian. I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself right quick. I was born in Pcola, and most of my family is from Mobile. I live in Memphis, but get down South as often as I can. My fiance, Amy, and I will be down the first week of March for our wedding and then our honeymoon. Lucky for me, my lady likes to hang out with me while I fish, so I'll be wetting some lines that week. I've got a new Penn Spinfisher surf rod & reel that will be here tomorrow. We plan on fishing the surf obviously, as well as the dock from our condo on Old River, and checking out the pier. All of that being said, I looked over the tide charts and saw, to my disappointment, that there will be a neap tide that week. So other than "don't go", does anyone have any recommendations for fishing that week? Thanks for the help, and nice to meet y'all!

Brian

Hi, Brian!
I've caught sheepshead on a neap tide at the pier in March, so that'd be my suggestion. I'd have live shrimp and fiddler crabs to see which they prefer.

Well, Brian, first of all, congratulations!!! If she likes to hang out with you while you fish, she can't be all bad. I kinda like her already. It's kinda early, but I would keep an eye on whats happening on Mobile St. It might be ready to pop! Fishing seems to be getting better every day. But then what do I know, I'm a Yankee. Welcome to the Forum, it's a great place to be.

Welcome to the forum, Brian. By all means, go fishing. Forget about neap tides. I've made some decent catches on neap tides, though not my favorite time to fish. Just go when you can. There have been some pompano, whiting and redfish caught at the pier and in the surf, and the sheepshead may begin to turn on around structure. If you use dead shrimp, make sure they are fresh and not frozen. Live shrimp are always a prime bait. The beach east of Perdido Pass has some interesting cuts, bars and holes for fishing, and is not too far from where you will be staying, I think.

Congratulations on your wedding, and double congratulations on finding a lady who will join you in your fishing. Best of luck.

Thanks guys! I feel pretty lucky to have her! Now all I need to do is get her to catch a few so that she gets the fever too! Haywire, we're staying at Portside, so that should be and easy spot for us to hit. I planned on hitting up J&M for some shrimp and maybe some fiddlers. Is it worth it to buy a sand flea rake, or will my time be better spent just buying them and fishing?

IMHO your money and efforts would be better spent making and using a slurp gun (Youtube has easy instructions)to get ghost shrimp. I catch a few pompano on sand fleas but I catch a lot more on ghost shrimp and other species like them as well. I had trouble "slurping" this past weekend due to rough surf and over sleeping. If you have some medium spinning combos with 10-12lb line they will work just fine for the pier and surf if you rinse them after each day of fishing. Congratulations on the wedding. Be sure to take your girl out for dinner at Cobalt located at the Perdido Pass bridge.

I actually saw one of your other posts about slurping and had to look up what a slurp gun was to make sure it wasn't some sort of joke or euphemism that I wasn't aware of! Lol! I'll definitely look into that. And we had considered dinner at Cobalt. We took a dolphin cruise on the Wild Hearts catamaran and met the GM of Cobalt and his wife on the trip. We've been meaning to go check it out since then.

What Chillinfish said. I don't think sand fleas are real abundant around here this time of year, and ghost shrimp are just about the ultimate bait.

Well I guess I'd better get busy building a slurp gun!

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Originally Posted by rabidawise

Well I guess I'd better get busy building a slurp gun!

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Ghost shrimp are the coolest creatures ever, their fossil records dating back to the Jurassic Period. They're actually a little scary looking, at first and if you haven't handled them before, you might wonder if they bite or pinch. They don't. They move in a slothlike manner, like they're in slow motion and they are extremely hardy, needing little oxygen to survive. They're detritivores, which means that they feed on decayed/decaying matter, but rarely emerge from their tunnels in the sand by choice. I SO wish that I could devise and set a trap for them, like folks do for lobsters or crabs!

Gotta love knowing the science behind things! So I guess since they rarely come out of their holes, that makes them a sort of delicacy for our scaled prey? What all will hit off them?

Pompano, sheepshead, redfish, whiting, speckled trout. Only problem with them is that they are kinda soft and the fish can get them off the hook if they're so inclined. They can also be hard to keep alive unless you change their water real often---they'll poop themselves out of a place to live. You can soak newspaper in salt water, spread them on it, cover with more wet paper and keep them on top of your ice.

Closest kin is a Hermit Crab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassinidea

Got two pumps built, the materials cost was the same, go figure!
http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...4677-image.jpg