Bait

Hey y'all I am down with my family on vacation for the week. I have a cast net, sand flea basket, and a sucker thing for the ghost shrimp. Just wondering where's a blgood place to catch bait. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Lucas

Welcome to the Forum, JLucas. It would help to know where you are staying to answer your questions. Generally speaking, to collect bait you would not try areas that are full of people enjoying the area. If I were you, I might try fresh shrimp, not frozen, or an artificial bait called Fish Bites.

Welcome to the forum, JLucas. You will find the ghost shrimp in shallow Gulf areas where you can see their little "volcanoes", usually about knee deep or a little more. It helps if the water is kind of calm. The sand fleas will be where the waves run up on shore to down where the first dropoff is. If you watch closely as you walk slowly, you will see them dive back into the sand as the wave recedes---just keep working at it, sometimes you can dig them up blind.

I'm not much of a cast net person---most of what I catch is small LYs and finger mullet around the launching ramps at Cotton Bayou and Boggy Point in Orange Beach. I'm told by very reliable sources that the pass at Little Lagoon in West Beach Gulf Shores is a great place for ghost shrimp and throwing the cast net. Ghost shrimp in the gulf and other bait in the pass.

Good luck----live shrimp aren't all that expensive and the best ones are at J&M Tackle in Orange Beach.

Unless you are catching your own bait for fun, I'd go buy live/fresh dead shrimp and a few mullet for cutbait. This will save you an or two of valuable fishing time. I found this out first hand this weekend when I spent an hour trying to net pinfish and find sand fleas, to no avail. I ended up wasting precious time that I could have spent with rods in the water. If you have kids with you, teach them to scout out sand fleas and slurp ghost shrimp. They will love it and you get to keep fishing.

Good luck!

You can catch menhaden in your cast net under the bridge on 59 at Canal Park. The water is shallow and there are a lot of rocks that will eat you cast net.