Thread: today is the first day I have ever been surf fishing

I caught several little fish but with no experience I had no idea what I was catching. I can identify reds and specs and pompano but is there an app or something that helps identify fish?

Possibly, the best strategy is to just work from a list of fish that can be found in the surf and do a google-search of them. Here are several species of fish found in the Alabama surf. I'm sure there are some that I haven't mentioned (other than redfish, pompano, and speckled trout, since you already know what they look like). But it's a start!

Black Drum

Bluefish

Flounder

Hardtail

Hardhead Catfish

Jack Crevalle

Ladyfish

Lizardfish

Lookdown

Pigfish

Pinfish

Remora

Sailcat

Sheepshead

White trout

Whiting (Generic description of Northern, Southern, and Gulf Kingfish)

Spadefish

Spanish Mackerel

The Alabama Tide calendar has commonly caught fish on pages 14 and 15.

https://www.outdooralabama.com/sites...s-Calendar.pdf

Here's a more exhaustive one, but you have to browse through pictures if you don't have a guess at the name.

Florida Saltwater Fishes

List of Marine Fishes of Texas


Also fishbase which is encyclopedic, but actual pictures which is not always good.

Search FishBase

And Texas Saltwater, also encyclopedic, but with descriptions

http://texasseagrant.org/assets/uplo...s_of_Texas.pdf

A basic description would go a long way in helping discover what species it was.
Most common "little fish" in the surf this time of year are "whiting" (gulf kingfish), blue runner ("hardtail"), pinfish, catfish, Atlantic bumper maybe...