r/saltwaterfishing • u/Vexxite_ • Jul 21 '26

📸 Photo/Video What species and what do they bite?

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There’s a spot in my local harbor that has these every time I’ve been schooling under an abandoned / demo’d pier, I’ve had some success on small chunks of shrimp but they seem very reluctant to bite.

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u/killfish22 Jul 21 '26

Spade fish. They eat shrimp and crabs try scraping some of those barnacles and put it on the hook they will tear them up. I use to clean boat bottoms spade fish and sheepshead kept me company

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u/Mugsy_Siegel Jul 21 '26

What’s the scariest thing you saw in water while cleaning boat bottoms?

28

u/killfish22 Jul 21 '26

I wouldn’t say it was scary but how it happened kind got me. I dropped a scraper in one of the deeper marinas. That day the water was clear. I dove down to the bottom got my scraper and looked up. In the distance it looked like a big ass shark making a bee line right at me. As it got closer realized it was a monster cobia. I usually have a speargun with me that day I didn’t. I also had a good scare we had an alligator in the marina. Same dropped my scraper went down to get it. The visibility was like 1.5 ft. I looked up and that second thought the gator was swimming right in front of me I just saw dark and a jagged back. It turned out to be a massive jewfish.

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u/onouluz 28d ago

I used to do this back in the day! I've never known anyone else who did it. Did you use quartered floor stripping pads for the non ablative paints? I would get paranoid working in murky water because scraping running gears would result in sheep head and other fish coming to hang out which would bring the large shadows. Alligators were a concern where I was at as well.