Bait Guide

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Grass Shrimp By Russell & Maureen Alberston
Shrimp What is a "grass shrimp"?
Palaemonetes spp.: Grass shrimp, also known as shore shrimp; one of three species living in the NJ area.
Group name: Caridean---edible shrimp are an entirely different group, the Penaeids. Most Caridean adults reach 1 1/2 to 2 inches long.
Larvae hatch into a protozoea stage that has no mature appendages, small enough to be confused with plankton, then pass through metamorphic stages, becoming more shrimp-like. Another species of interest is the sand shrimp, which are often found in a fluke's belly, and can be caught by seine net in sandy beach/flat areas along the shore. Both species are brown, the grass shrimp being lighter in color and almost translucent, the sand shrimp are a mottled brown, and can grow as large as 2 3/4 inches long.
Catching the Grass Shrimp
    Grass shrimp can be gathered in lagoons, creeks, irrigation ditches, and in the middle of the bay. Any structure is a good place to look for shrimp: pipes, bulkheads, patches of eelgrass, sunken boats, fences, sod ledges, even submerged shopping carts! They seem to have a preference for shady areas, but you can find them out in the open on sunny days as well. Getting to know the habits of the little creatures can drive some people crazy. They are there one day, and you can't find one the next. They really are not fond of a lot of fresh water, so rain is not one of the things you want the day before you go shrimping. Bugs will be out to get you, and if it's hot, you'll lose shrimp before you get home.

    A dedicated angler can spend the best part of a good day getting shrimp, using a large, fine mesh net, and working areas where they can be scooped. Most times they have coolers on the boat to keep their bait alive 'til they can get it home and into their dockside storage boxes. Others take their floating boxes with them, and after they catch the shrimp they head off to fish, towing the bait-filled box.

    There are baymen who catch shrimp commercially with a dredging device, that looks similar to two commercial clam rakes welded side by side. This works something along the lines of dredge and scoop technique, but in larger quantities than found by using a regular net, and including species of shrimp other than the grass shrimp. Commercial shrimping under power by boat requires a special license.
Storage of Grass Shrimp
    Grass shrimp are delicate little crustaceans, one of the hardest baits to keep alive, being even more sensitive to temperature changes than minnows. It is necessary to make sure that you keep your shrimp in good shape. Keeping them moist and cool is important, a few minutes in hot sun can turn them as pink as any boiled edible shrimp--they aren't usable baits when cooked. If you accumulate a large amount of dead shrimp and leave them mixed with your live ones, they will spoil the scent of the rest of your shrimp. The most common way to keep grass shrimp for a day's fishing, would be to put them in a cooler with ice on the bottom, covered with a thick layer of wet newspaper. Spread the shrimp out in a thin layer on top ot the paper. It is very difficult to keep shrimp alive in a bucket with an aerator, because you cannot normally generate enough oxygen in the water. A livewell, with a pump generating a continuous water flow, would have an oxygen level adequate to keep them alive.

    As the summer heat warms the water, it becomes difficult to keep the grass shrimp alive. Shrimp consume large amounts of oxygen and therefore require quite a bit of storage space as the lagoon becomes warmer and oxygen levels drop. A shrimp box is larger than your normal floating bait box, to allow more exposure to oxygenated water. The bait box should also be designed so that it can be semi-submerged, to keep the shrimp in deeper, cooler water, because cooler water holds more oxygen.

Fishing with Grass Shrimp
    Shrimp can be used for bait on a hook or scattered in the water as chum to attract fish. A shrimp slick makes an excellent chum, because it attracts many different kinds of fish. They attract species of smaller fish that become bait for the large fish. The larger fish know that if they hang around where there is an abundance of grass shrimp, the small bait fish that are feeding on the shrimp may become distracted, and be unaware that the big ones are hanging around for an easy meal.

    When chumming with shrimp, there are a couple of very important things to keep in mind. One is that you should try to keep up as steady a slick as possible, even if you don't use a lot of shrimp. Secondly, a heavy slick with quantities of shrimp will have the best results. You know how hard it was to get the shrimp (especially if you caught them yourself), and it is awfully easy to find yourself hoarding them. This isn't the answer to catching fish, because all the shrimp that you take back home with you didn't help to catch a fish.

    It is extremely important to fish early or late. Insist on no boating traffic. Study your area and be someplace at dawn or dusk where no boats are going to come near you. In either case, the time spent shrimp chumming is probably no more than 1 1/2 hours. That is plenty of time to catch your limit if conditions are right. By the time the boats find you, it is time to quit.

    Let's move on to the use of grass shrimp as a rigged bait. Many anglers in the saltwater scene think of shrimp as strictly weakfish bait, not realising that the little critters can do very well on blackfish, sea bass, fluke, bluefish(small ones), white perch, as well as other species of small fish. When cleaning fish, curious anglers find that the most common food in our local fish's stomach is grass shrimp; small crabs being a close second. Check our information on shedder crabs for more input on their use.

    When using shrimp for fluke or weakfish , use light wire hooks and install quite a few shrimp on each hook. When fishing for blackfish, smaller than normal hooks are recommended. Load these hooks up with bait as well. When fishing for white perch in brackish tributaries up and down the state you will probably find that one shrimp per hook is enough. This writer uses # 4 gold baitholders hooks(Mustad 92642), hooking the shrimp in the forward part of the tail, just to the rear of the carapace. This helps to keep the shrimp alive a little bit longer.

Additional Information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaemonetes

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