I haven't fished at the beach in many years ( probably since I was a teenager). We never caught much down there except a few small catfish and other small stuff. My family and I are going to Florida Wednesday and I want to fish with my boys so I've been trying to learn about how to actually catch fish worth something. From what I've read and watched pompano are fun to catch and taste good. I've never made rigs before, but I guess I like doing things the hard way so I watched some videos and ordered the supplies. This is how they turned out. I used size 1 and 1/0 hooks because I read they had small mouths and a lot of the store bought rigs had hooks that were too big.

Any tips or improvements? I plan to bait them with fish bites and maybe sand fleas.

Those look pretty good to me. Please post pictures once you bring in the haul!

Looks good. I would use peeled shrimp as well.

I will!



Ok. I'll try that. Thank you.

They look better than the store bought ones.

Seems most the pompano I catch are in the actual breakers of the waves. No need to cast 100 yds out. What I’ve seen in videos are they eat the sandfleas that get exposed in the commotion. I’ve literally caught them 15’ off the beach. I saw a videotape that peach’s son did and he throws out a far, med, and short distance rod. Angler up with Brandt is his channel. Very informative.

As Peach said, fresh peeled shrimp. Fresh piece of clam will work too.

Next time put the candy corn on the hook. They can’t resist it close to Halloween

I went down to Fort Morgan the first week of August and used peeled shrimp and a small piece of "fish bites" flavored sand fleas on the end of the hook and we caught about 10 through 2 days. Sounds like you should find plenty of success.

Good deal. Just got rigged up. We are going to give it a shot starting tomorrow morning.

What time of day did you find was best? I'm going to try to find somewhere with fresh shrimp nearby. If I can't find some, we may use frozen.

Nothing wrong with shrimp, sandfleas or fishgum/fishbites but I've never seen anything that could hold a candle to ghost shrimp for pompano and whiting.

Dawn-about 10am and then around sunset and maybe a hour before.

Got beat badly today by my 10 year old. He caught 9 fish (4 pompano, 2 blue fish, 2 lady fish, and a needle fish). I caught 4 lady fish. Apparently, float color matters a lot because he was getting bit and that was the only significant difference. Same line, same bead, both were rigs I tied. If anything I had superior equipment because he was using an old rod and reel that the owner of the place we are staying had in the shed and said we could use. It was really old and the handle was loose. I was casting for both of us so distance was similar. Green/yellow float was better than orange/yellow today. I tied a new rig for myself this evening and tied him a fresh one because it was getting rough so tomorrow we'll both have green/yellow.

It appears that the young man had a great time of it. Makes all of the time and effort you put into getting everything ready for the fishing trip well worth it. Good job Dad.

Good job

He had a blast.

Got a keeper today.

congratulations! That is awesome. Glad the rigs worked out.

Also - what hooks did you end up with and do you have any feedback on the size you used combined with the bait?

Nice. Y’all did better than me when I was in p c. Couple weeks ago. Never saw a pomp. That’s my luck though

Awesome!!! Always good when hard work, preparation and opportunity meet! I’m sure that blue gave him a good fight

Owner size 1 and 1/0. Size seemed to be appropriate for a wide range of species. Caught all sizes from this 4 inch long fish to about a 2-3 pound blue fish.





We used fish bites (electric chicken) combined with shrimp the first day. Shrimp didn't stay on hook very good so the second day we just used fish bites alone on the pompano rigs, but also threw cut bait on a 5/o hook on one line hoping to catch something bigger.

Good deal. Sounds like he had a good time

Not much biting today. He caught 2 lady fish and some other little fish. I think we're fished out.

He held his mouth right and you didn't.