artificial bait for croakers?

[keakar]

I love croakers and would love to catch them but I hate the hard head catfish and stingrays that come with using market shrimp for bait so is there anyone who successfully goes out and targets croakers with small artificial baits?

I grew up catching them off piers at night on market shrimp along with hard heads and stingrays but I don't want to be bothered with the trash fish that comes with dead bait fishing.

are they strictly a fish you must use some kind of meat to catch or can you have good success only with small artificial baits? (no live bait)

truthfully I wouldn't know where to start or what to use or how to target them so even though I fished all my life I never sought out to catch croakers in the marsh, it just kinda happened by accident when I was dead meat fishing for reds.

I would be targeting them in the golden meadow / leeville area

[Matt G]

I've caught plenty on a Gulp swimming mullet bumping on the bottom on a slow retrieve. Flounder love these too.

image.jpg

[keakar]

Originally Posted by Matt G

I've caught plenty on a Gulp swimming mullet bumping on the bottom on a slow retrieve. Flounder love these too.

Attachment 61748

what size did you use?
was it tipped with shrimp?
was it a smaller jig size then you use for trout & reds?

im very interested in what I might be doing wrong, maybe its how im fishing but they never seam interested in my cocahoe tail or split tailed beetle unless I add shrimp to it and then the trash fish get all over it.

[T-Dave]

I usually save the gulp that get tore up by the specks. I use them on a drop shot rig on a small hook. Still pick up a few Hardheads but not as many as market bait. I try to find deep spots in the bends of a bayou.


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[Clampy]

Small chunk of a gulp shrimp on a bream hook.


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[keakar]

ok, so far it has just been the scented lures that people have caught them on.

do you have any suggestions on where to find and target them? I realize they can be and often are scattered everywhere but im asking where they might be found in groups of numbers like specks will congregate together.

my only experience was in lake ponchatrain in very shallow water and nothing but flat mud with no structure so you got drunk and waited for one to swim near your bait wich was about 15-20 minutes between bites most often so attempting to target them in the marsh is new to me.

where should I look for concentrations of them to be found? shallow, deep, near drop offs, in deeper water, or just about anywhere?

would it be a good idea to use a can of cat food with holes in it to attract them?

I never learned much about there habits like I did with reds and specks so this would be a truly brand new type of fishing for me.

[Hebert]

do a search for "fishbites"..work great for croaker...the bloodworms fishbites work good

["W"]

Castnet

[keakar]

Originally Posted by "W"

Castnet

umm, no "W" im looking for eating size croakers, not ones for live bait

Originally Posted by Hebert

do a search for "fishbites"..work great for croaker...the bloodworms fishbites work good

thanks, i'll look into it, seams like a little of that will go a long way.


I get the impression from all the responses so far that some form of meat smell is needed to catch them weather that's real meat or from scented baits.


am I right in thinking scented baits catch just as much hard heads and stingrays as real meat will? because if that's just how it is, then I can deal with it but im just trying to reduce the trash I catch as much as possible

[Clampy]

LNG


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[keakar]

Originally Posted by Clampy

LNG


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LNG ?????? what does that stand for?

[Clampy]

I dunno. I just figured they would be some big croakers hanging out in LNG cut.


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[keakar]

Originally Posted by Clampy

I dunno. I just figured they would be some big croakers hanging out in LNG cut.


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where is the LNG cut? I never heard anyone mention it before

[Clampy]

Leave calcasueiu pt and hang right. ImageUploadedByTapatalk1390258034.174781.jpg


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[keakar]

ok, thanks

[Clampy]

We used to hammer the big giant croakers on live shrimp back in late 90s early 2000s. I haven't seen this big ones around in 10plus years. Every now and then we catch a big one but not often.


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[keakar]

Originally Posted by Clampy

We used to hammer the big giant croakers on live shrimp back in late 90s early 2000s. I haven't seen this big ones around in 10plus years. Every now and then we catch a big one but not often.


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wow, I haven't seen any over a one pound being caught inshore since the 80's. in the last 20 years I cant remember seeing anyone catch over a one pound croaker unless they went offshore.

I dunno if its the large increase in the numbers of people trawling increasing, thereby vastly increasing infant mortality in trawling by-catch.

that said there seams to be no end to the amount of the small 2" fish so so that seams to indicate by-catch isn't the main cause of why we are not having larger sized fish caught, although im sure it has to have an impact.

I have a hard time believing the bigger fish are all just being eaten by other fish, every single one of them, as they get bigger.

its like they don't get big anymore for whatever reason, you just don't see them. finding a 16" or bigger croaker is about as hard as finding free money

I have a wish that they would do research into finding out why they no longer survive long enough to grow bigger but then at the same time, I am afraid, as with everything else they research, they would start slapping ridiculous restrictions and regulations on catching them. while I would welcome reasonable and scientific based regulation it rarely is and all they ever want to do is stop fishing rather then properly regulate it. I honestly believe all they ever thing is the right thing to do is restrict catches rather then actually find out what and why things are happening with fish populations.

it is a shame when you cant trust those who are supposed to be entrusted with regulating fisheries to solve the real problems of fish mortality and breeding rather then just create burdensome regulations as there answer to every problem.

when I used to fish with my dad and uncle back in the 70's we would catch a 3-5 lb croaker on almost every trip we made, they were about as dependable to be caught as a redfish or drum. since then the number of people who fish and the number of people who trawl has increased 100 fold and the dramatic loss of land and habitat must be partly to blame as well but it drives me crazy to know that no one even cares or is trying to find out why this particular fish has an almost absolute mortality rate to where no adults survive.

[swamp snorkler]

Originally Posted by keakar

wow, I haven't seen any over a one pound being caught inshore since the 80's. in the last 20 years I cant remember seeing anyone catch over a one pound croaker unless they went offshore.

I dunno if its the large increase in the numbers of people trawling increasing, thereby vastly increasing infant mortality in trawling by-catch.

that said there seams to be no end to the amount of the small 2" fish so so that seams to indicate by-catch isn't the main cause of why we are not having larger sized fish caught, although im sure it has to have an impact.

I have a hard time believing the bigger fish are all just being eaten by other fish, every single one of them, as they get bigger.

its like they don't get big anymore for whatever reason, you just don't see them. finding a 16" or bigger croaker is about as hard as finding free money

I have a wish that they would do research into finding out why they no longer survive long enough to grow bigger but then at the same time, I am afraid, as with everything else they research, they would start slapping ridiculous restrictions and regulations on catching them. while I would welcome reasonable and scientific based regulation it rarely is and all they ever want to do is stop fishing rather then properly regulate it. I honestly believe all they ever thing is the right thing to do is restrict catches rather then actually find out what and why things are happening with fish populations.

it is a shame when you cant trust those who are supposed to be entrusted with regulating fisheries to solve the real problems of fish mortality and breeding rather then just create burdensome regulations as there answer to every problem.

when I used to fish with my dad and uncle back in the 70's we would catch a 3-5 lb croaker on almost every trip we made, they were about as dependable to be caught as a redfish or drum. since then the number of people who fish and the number of people who trawl has increased 100 fold and the dramatic loss of land and habitat must be partly to blame as well but it drives me crazy to know that no one even cares or is trying to find out why this particular fish has an almost absolute mortality rate to where no adults survive.

I wouldn't put money on that, I would say it has went down....... and a lot. Since the late 90's I have seen more people get out of trawling than into it and it's not even close.

[keakar]

Originally Posted by swamp snorkler

I wouldn't put money on that, I would say it has went down....... and a lot. Since the late 90's I have seen more people get out of trawling than into it and it's not even close.

true but if you look at it going back to the 70's there was really little to no individuals or I should say recreational trawlers out there.

then suddenly everybody and their uncle was out there dragging a net around and you couldn't get in the water anywhere without a chance of running into them.

yes they have been run out of it because of the cost of fuel and lower prices on shrimp but im going to make up numbers here to get my point across but its the overall percentages that changed is whats important in my example, not the numbers I use.

example using made up numbers:
there used to be 1000 inshore commercial trawlers and 100 inshore recreational trawlers every year, this changed and suddenly a few years later there was still 1000 commercial trawlers out there but now there was 5000 inshore recreational trawlers. a few more years later things changed again and trawling was much less profitable so there was 800 inshore commercial trawlers out there and 2000 inshore recreational trawlers. so while inshore recreational numbers have made a huge decline and their numbers have been reduced by 60%, they still have a whole lot more of them out there then they ever did in the past and they have at least matched the amount of by-catch created by inshore commercial trawling and I think surpassed it.

I don't consider offshore trawling in this example because recreationals don't do offshore but I will say in my opinion I think the offshore boats are a lot more efficient then they used to be with modern electronics that can better target what they are after but I don't know if that might create more or less by-catch overall or what impact if any the new electronics make.


all this may mean nothing at all or maybe it does but it would be nice if someone could figure out the answers and be able to say why croakers don't survive long enough to get big and what can be done to correct the problem because they are certainly capable of growing to large size.

[Sightwindow]

I'm glad I don't fish around where you're fishing. I hardly ever see recreational trawling in the cocodrie/dulac area. Very happy about it, too.