When fishing offshore, anglers will almost always do some sort of bottom fishing. Once fishermen start fishing a reef, hump, or ledge, they’ll usually anchor up or let the boat drift across the reef. Without minimal boat movement, baits and lures can drop to the bottom nearly vertically and pull bottom dwellers out of the reef. The best baits to use for bottom fishing include live grunts and shrimp, cut squid or bonito, and artificial slow pitch jigs. Live baits are dropped on a live bait rig while cut baits typically use a knocker rig. Slow pitch jigs are rigged with a leader and are frequently bit near bottom. This article will discuss some of the best baits and how to find and rig them.
Grunts, Shrimp, and Blue Runners Make Great Live Bottom Baits
Bottom fishing can also be done with live bait. Live shrimp, grunts, and other baitfish can be hooked on a rig and dropped to the bottom. Using live bait can be a fun way to extend your fishing trip if you’re on a fishing vacation or looking for a long day out. Sometimes you can find live bait at a bait shop, but it can be hard to get to the bait shop early enough to get live bait before going out offshore and can be even tougher to keep the bait alive overnight if you get it the night before.
One of the top live baits for bottom fishing are grunts. There’s an old saying “where there are grunts, there are grouper”, but don’t be fooled into thinking you’ll only get grouper. Snapper will feed on grunts too. You can catch these bottom feeders in waters less than 60 ft deep near reefs and you’ll have the best luck if you fish for them at night. It can be fun to catch these premium baits with small hooks and line on an overnight trip. You can locate these using sonar since they travel in schools and you should be able to see a school of baitfish. Drop your line with a hook tipped with a small piece of cut shrimp and see if you can catch some.
Predatory bottom fish like grouper, snapper, triggerfish, and amber jack will all feed on crustaceans too. Live shrimp is one of the easier baits to catch and it works well. It’s easy find, easy to catch, and easy to rig since it doesn’t slip out of your hand as easily as a small baitfish does.
Look for shrimp in shallow flats at low tide if you’re wading, or around bridges or deep holes if you’re on a boat. Throw a cast net out and let it sink low enough to catch the shrimp suspending just above the bottom.
A less common bait to use is a blue runner. You can find them easily in Florida. Sometimes I find them around the inlet, and sometimes it seems they’re right on the reef. Try catching these with a sabiki rig and a bait rod to catch more at a time. The sabiki rig helps fill up your livewell without so many drops and retrieves. Pilchards, goggle eyes, green backs, pinfish, and mullets are all commonly used for live bait too.
When I use live bait for bottom fishing, I’ll use a live bait rig and hook the bait up through the nose with a closed mouth. I’ll make my live bait rig with a non-offset, non-stainless steel circle hook when fishing the Gulf and I’ll tie the hook a 6 ft leader of 60 lb mono. The leader is connected to a barrel swivel and an egg sinker is on the other side of the swivel. This works well for live bait so the sinker doesn’t knock straight into the bait and disorient it. The more natural presentation, the better. The 6 ft leader lets the bait suspend off the bottom while the sinker keeps you close enough to bottom to target the big bottom dwellers.
Whole, Cut, and Strip Baits Are Simple and Effective for Bottom Fishing
By and large the most common way of bottom fishing is with dead, cut bait. The angler will drop the squid, bonito, or ballyhoo piece down to the bottom and usually a strike happens right away. The simplicity of bottom fishing with cut bait is a big advantage too. Any angler, novice or expert, can quickly put some cut bait on a rig and drop it (as long as they can hold onto the slippery, slimy piece), however you’ll likely only succeed if your captain properly places you over a reef or structure.
Tangled lines can become an issue when a boat full of people all drop their lines to the bottom. Three lines each with a sinker and cut bait will drop to the bottom similarly, but can still cause tangles if the speed of dropping varies between anglers. Imagine if all three lines had swimming live baits on them. The likelihood of getting tangled would be even higher.
Dead baits are much easier to deal with than live bait. You can buy frozen squid or ballyhoo frozen from your local tackle shop in advance of a fishing trip and keep it in your freezer. Let it thaw the night before and use it whole or cut it into smaller sections before putting it on your hook. It’s so much easier to deal with a cooler of dead bait instead of figuring out how to get your live bait and keep it alive.
When using the tail-end of the bait, some anglers will cut off the tail to prevent spin. Unless you have a swivel in the rig, spin will cause line twist that’s difficult to get out.
When choosing frozen bait to buy, I’d recommend getting a variety. Sometimes it seems like the fish want squid and sometimes it seems like they want cut baitfish. I’ve also had success using thawed frozen squid. Bottom feeding reef species like to feed on crustaceans, squid and baitfish. Any of them will work, but I tend to keep a variety to avoid getting skunked.
Whole baits, strip baits, and cut baits can all be used to effectively target some of the most sought-after reef species. I’ve caught everything from amber jack to red snapper on a simple knocker rig with cut squid.
Some anglers prefer using the head and some prefer using a tougher body section of the fish. When using the head, I’ll put the hook up through the mouth to help keep its mouth closed. It seems like the bait gets worn down faster if I leave the mouth open and water flows through it. A firm body section seems to last longer if I have to drop it down multiple times before a bite.
When rigging cut bait, my go-to is a simple knocker rig. I choose a non-offset, non-stainless steel circle hook to comply with the reef species gear rules in my area, and tie an egg sinker right next to it. The egg sinker can slide up and down the leader freely. I like the simplicity of this rig so I can easily tie on another if something happens to it. If you’d like to learn more about what rigs to use for bottom fishing and how to tie them, read my article Bottom Fishing Rigs.
A word of caution about buying a pre-rigged frozen bait like ballyhoo: often times they’re rigged for trolling with heavy wire and skirts which are unnecessary for bottom fishing.
Cut bait is considered a natural bait, so you’ll need to be cognizant of the hook regulations in your area. For example, in Florida state waters on the Gulf side, the cut bait must be rigged with a non-offset, non-stainless steel circle hook when targeting reef fish such as grouper, snapper, or triggerfish. Hook regulations on reef fish are discussed in detail in my article Bottom Fishing Hooks.
For larger bottom fish, I’d recommend using the VMC Circle Black Nickel Hook which is non-offset, non-stainless steel, and a strong enough gauge to withstand bigger grouper. A 7/0 size will work well. The hook also has a barb to help keep the bait from sliding off.
Try Slow Pitch Jigs to Change Up Your Bottom Presentation
Slow pitch jigging is another form of bottom fishing. When slow pitch jigging, a wide and flat artificial lure is used. As the lure falls to the bottom in freespool, it turns horizontal in the water and wobbles on its way down. Depending on the center of gravity of the lure, some lures turn completely horizontal, and some have a more angled fall. The unique contours of the lure will cause a more or less erratic wobble. These tend to also be colorful and flashy lures. Often times, the flash is used to draw in predators from further distances.
Slow pitch jigs are usually dropped next to reefs. Once the lure reaches bottom, the fisherman jigs and retrieves it up a few feet and lets it fall again. The bottom dwelling species will come out of the reef or structure and strike the lure as it falls. The lure mimics a dead baitfish and is seen as an easy meal for predatory species. As a result, the strikes are normally soft on these jigs.
A slow pitch setup is great to have on hand. Whenever you’re out bottom fishing and the bite slows down, it's great to be able to switch to a totally different presentation with a slow pitch jig. Often times this changeup will help get fish in the boat.
My top two slow pitch jigs are the Shimano Butterfly Flat Fall and the Nomad Buffalo Jig.
The Shimano Butterfly Flat Fall jig falls perfectly horizontally. I tried this one out during red snapper season out of Port Canaveral Florida and was catching more fish than the guys on the boat doing traditional bottom fishing. The assist hook pair improves the odds of a solid hookset and the coloring is great. I usually choose the size depending on the water depth, e.g. 100 g lure for 100 ft of water. When choosing a color, I would first try to match the hatch, but if you can’t see any baitfish, I would go for chartreuse or pink.
The Nomad Buffalo jig works in a similar way to the Shimano Butterfly Flat Fall jig. Both are center balanced and designed to turn horizontal and wobble. The Nomad jig is slightly less expensive than the Shimano jig, $12 versus $14 for the 80g jigs. Both of them are high quality jigs with paint jobs that hold up to repeated use. You may notice that the Shimano comes with 2 assist hooks pre-rigged, whereas the Nomad comes with only one hook pre-rigged. You can attach an additional assist hook to the Buffalo jig if you’d rather have two.
These jigs can get quite expensive. Building up a collection when each jig costs around $10-$20 adds up quick. There are a couple of things you can do to help out with the cost. For one, if there are any toothy fish around, I highly recommend rigging with a small length of wire leader. This will protect against getting the jig bit off and losing an expensive jig. You could also look for multipurpose jigs, such as the Nomad Gypsea jig.
The Nomad Gypsea jig has a v shape on one side which helps it flutter when its falling, like most slow pitch jigs. When this jig is used with a traditional style jigging technique, it has a wider acoustic thump on the way up. The versatility you get for the cost of this jig makes it a great way to fill out a jig collection. You can read about even more bottom fishing lures in my article Best Bottom Lures.
Although uncommon, we must address adding bait to slow pitch jigs. Most often slow pitch jigs are rigged with J hooks and are intended to be fished without a baited tip. As discussed earlier, it’s likely that there are regulations on the hooks you can use for reef species and you must be aware of whether its legal in your area to tip the hook with a piece of bait before doing it. As recreational anglers, we should always adhere to the laws designed to conserve our fisheries.
Before you leave, check out my summary article for a high-level guide to bottom fishing.
Tight lines, y’all!
