best ling bait
 

heading to G.I. on Sunday for a few and hope to catch some mangroves along with specks if the weather cooperates. Just wondering, while I have done some mangrove fishing before, I have never targeted ling, but I plan to have a rod rigged for it in case they come by. Any suggestions for what bait might work best for them?

Anything live always works. Pogie, mullet, croaker, catfish ( cut the stingers off).

and if you have one on the line keep other poles in the water, you often catch a second one who comes up under the boat unseen to follow the one on your line up to the boat.

many times I nearly lost a rod putting it down to get the net for my partners cobia and my pole starts screaming so if you put one down be sure its in a rod holder or it can be snapped in half or taken over the side while you are concentrated elsewhere

Gulp Eels wacky rigged on a big #6 swim bait hook

thanks for the tips guys. I hear a Bucktail jig works also. Anyone have good results with that?

Bucktail jigs work fine. If you can add a soft plastic curly tail to it, even better. Those suckers can be pretty finicky. Caught one this past weekend on a frenzy angry popper. We presented him with about 4 different options, including cut pogie, but he wanted the top water.

8" Giant Curl Tails on 6oz jig head.
They like pink!

^^this...... If you want to catch the gayest ling ever

Shrimp

^^^^ what what what he's back !

Well, back from G.I. Didn't do much on the specks, but we did well on the Mangroves. Sizes ranged from 12 1/2" to 26". Sneaky little suckers, in spite of us using 65# braid and 50# flouro leader with big rods, they continued to hang us up on the bottom. They weren't biting close to the platform, rather they were about 20 yds. from it. There appeared to be a bunch of junk on the bottom that they would tie us up with until we had to break the line (which was darn difficult with what we were using). Last fish I caught tied me up with a pipe which I managed to break off and drag up to the surface, then I saw that although he had circled the pipe, he was still hooked so we called that our "pipe fish".

Didn't see a ling, but I was ready with a bucktail if he had showed his face.