Salt water pirahnas hurting my back pocket......

[The Below Average Angler]

The pinfish have been tearin my DOA paddle tails up 2 weekends in a row now. I have lost some serious tails due to those terrors. I would hate to see the results if I were throwing GULP out there. I have been avoiding using hard baits, due to the floating grass that I have seen the last couple of weeks. Anyone else experiencing this?

[TerryW]

Gulp are heartier than some of the other soft plastics, especially certain colors. Believe me, I know this for a fact! On the other hand, a chewed off paddletail can still catch fish.

The floating grass has been causing me fits this year like no other year in recent memory. Can't use my favorite topwater or other favorite MirrorLures. Live bait stinks. What's a girl to do?

[Heywood]

Throw a spoon.

[TerryW]

Throw a spoon.

Bill - even the bestest of the spoons I've thrown have been catching much, much more grass than fish.

[ChrisR]

In my experiences, the floating grass is not nearly as bad this year as it has been previously. I have been going through a lot of soft plastics lately though. My plug rod has been getting a pretty good workout as a result with both topwater (Spook Jr.) and floating twitchbaits (Floating Sitck Shadd) producing. When I have found grass, it has been in patches, and easily fished around. In the 2 or 3 cases that there were fish near the floating grass, I have been using the fly rod. 1/0 Puglisi in olive over white has been the fly, even in freshwater.

[justabucup]

What's a girl to do?

Hook an RT Slug / White Horny Toad type of bait weedless using a worm hook. This can be fished as a top water. Peg a bullet weight on the line to make it a weedless jig if you want to fish deeper.

[DaveR]

There was even floating grass in the Gulf yesterday.

[Dustin]

Throw the Strike King 3x soft-plastics. They don't stink, but trust me, they work (and pinfish will not tear them up). Get a tube of super glue to glue the bait to the jighead/weighted-hook, etc.

[MrSpectaculous]

Work the bait faster.

[Offlander]

Try a drop shot rig, And also use Strike King 3x soft-plastics. " Like Dustin said " Try the white ( Rage Eeliminator ).

[kneedeep]

Think of it this way.. If the pinfish are tearing your lures up, then that means THEY are the top preditors in the immediate area. If there were larger preditors in the area, then the pinnies would be to nervous to bite. My suggestion is simply move to a different area and throw a few times or simply check out the bait below. If they are aggressive, then there are no large preditors in the area. In short.. If you're catchin' bait and you only wanna fish with arties.., ..move.... If not,...Stick a hook in one of 'em and throw it back out!

[Lemon Bay Drifter]

well spoken kneedeep

[Norm]

Its that time of year Believe it or not..if you increase the size of your trebles, the grass will sometimes slide thru the gap.

[TerryW]

Dustin - Thanks for the reminder about StrikeKings. When the conditions dictated this a.m. I asked my friend, who is a StrikeKing aficionado, if he had one he could loan me. First cast - I caught a red. It was the only thing that caught reds for me today -- low. low tide with a whole lotta floating grass.

[BadBackcast]

We've been having that problem with the chewed up soft plastics. It's not pinfish that's doing it. It's Lizardfish. Saturday was like a lizardfish convention out at Dunedin Causeway. At one point, I had 2 for one on a Mirrodine.

I use the DOA Shad Tails too and it does happen to me....even on a standard DOA Shrimp. I get back a segmented version.

Kneedeep is right.

[Trootin]

Use the pinfish