Our kids fishing in the Lagoon 1st week of October

Hello everyone, I have been a member here for a couple of years and have been reading your posts a lot, but this is the first time I have posted anything. We are coming down the first week of October this year and we will be staying at the Gulf Shores Surf and Raquet Club. They have two private piers in the lagoon. We will be fishing off the piers and at Perdido pass some and surf fishing. We have two small kids, an eight year old and a two year old. My question is what would be the best baits or lures to use so our kids would have the best chance to catch fish? We will be using shrimp and some some small x-raps and small spoons. Any other suggestions? Thanks

You will tear up some 6"-10" croaker on small pieces of shrimp off the east pier at night. You may catch a few undersize speckled trout and redfish under the lights on live shrimp. I got into some big whiting and some slot reds from the beach directly across from the complex mid October year before last. I even caught one nice red on a pompano jig/teaser combination. You can also walk a few hundred yards down to Little Lagoon Pass and catch flounder on the Gulf side on an outgoing tide on Carolina rigged bull minnows. A lot of people wade out to the drop off inside the pass and catch flounder but I don't have the magic in that spot. There is a drop off that you can see on google maps right in front of the GSSR docks. I caught a few under size flounder on bull minnows back in late May of this year that were on the deep side of the drop. I had several strikes from daylight until sunrise on a black zara spook but only hooked one fish that made one jump and got off. The water was pretty dirty so you may do better if has cleared up.

http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...tid=6317&stc=1 I have a condo at GSSRC and at times we catch some nice size trout and Red fish off the piers at night. They can catch a lot of small fish using a small hook and shrimp. My grandson had a blast on the beach surf fishing. I will be down the last week in September. Good luck

Just a word of caution about those fishing piers/docks - the one on the right is fairly narrow and I'd have a life vest on at least the two year old when going out there to fish. That said, I would use live shrimp for redfish, speckled trout and flounder and I've had a heck of a lot of success there using paddletail baits (about 3") for specs there. I've never fished for anything else there, but I imagine that the kids could catch croakers on small pieces of fresh-dead shrimp in Oct.

Thank y'all for the great info!!!