Walk the shoreline before your first cast. Look in the water. Look in the bird droppings on the rocks. Net a baitball if you can without spooking fish. Whatever the dominant forage is at your spot, today, match three things:
- Size. Within a half-inch is fine; within an inch is bad.
- Profile. Round-bodied (peanut bunker) vs. slim (silversides) vs. long (sand eels) matters more than color.
- Action. Sand eels wiggle nose-down; bunker thump; silversides dart. Pick a lure whose action matches.
Color is a distant fourth. White is right 70% of the time. The other 30% is a chartreuse/silver flash for stained water.
Pre-trip homework:
- Check the most recent local report (last 72 hours) for the named bait.
- If your home port is on the East Coast in fall, default to peanut bunker. In summer, silversides. Spring run, herring or alewives.
- If you can’t find any visible forage and the water looks dead, that’s the signal — these fish are eating crustaceans on the bottom or have moved. Switch tactics rather than burning daylight on the wrong bait.
The corollary: never carry more than three sizes of any one bait shape. A box full of choices is a box full of indecision. Pick a size, fish it for 30 minutes, change once if it isn’t working, and don’t change again.