Fishing Snapper:Best Bridge Baits

Fishing Snapper:Best Bridge Baits

The best baits are hardy, humble live fish hooked through the lips. In Florida’s semitropical waters, shrimp are excessively vulnerable to the “machine gunners”—unsuitable fish which peck ‘em asunder in quick succession.

Pilchards get the nod in the Keys, particularly those in the 3- to 5-inch range for fishing snapper. You can jig them up with sabiki rigs (sizes 4 through 8, generally) in channels or net them with a 3/8-inch-mesh castnet on grassflats. Small pinfish also work well, either hooked on morsels of shrimp over a grassflat, corralled in a pinfish trap, or bought at a tackle shop.

Chumming isn’t essential, and in fact it may bring in too numerous nuisance fish, which can turn off the bigger snappers.

With an sufficient supply of pilchards, you end up chumming fish when you miss strikes, which you will.