Entry 145-5

Shaw Grigsby on Fishing Saltwater with Strike King

Snook

Editor’s Note: Shaw Grigsby of Gainesville, Florida, is one of Strike King’s most-visible pros with his TV show, his participation in Bassmasters tournaments and the promotions he does at boat shows, fishing events and anywhere sportsmen gather. Grigsby has taken Strike King Products into saltwater as well as freshwater, and this week, Grigsby will tell you some of the ways that Strike King lures have helped him to catch fish in both brackish water and saltwater. With Strike King in your tackle box, anywhere there’s water, you can go fishing and catch fish.

Grigsby: I fished for snook in Tampa Bay and Boca Grande this past year and wore the snook out using Zulus on top of the water and the Glass Minnow under the water. I would fish the Zulu first to try to get an aggressive bite. The snook would react to the bait just like the tarpon would, by blowing up on the lure and putting on quite a show.

When fishing for snook, I used 30-pound-test Stren Superbraid with a 30-pound-test Fluorocarbon leader. I rigged the Strike King Zulu Texas style, but then I pushed the nose of the Zulu over the eye of the hook and took a piece of 100-pound-test monofilament and ran that monofilament through the Zulu and through the eye of the hook and out the other side of the bait, just like a fisherman would put a toothpick through a plastic worm to hold it on the eye of the hook better at one time.

After I got the 100-pound-test monofilament through the eye of the hook and the head of the Zulu, I used a cigarette lighter to burn both ends of the monofilament and to create a monofilament on each end. I melted the end of the monofilament down to the Zulu, another way to insure that the Zulu didn’t slide off the hook. That monofilament acted as a keeper for the Zulu. Now, I was ready to fish.

I like to skip the Zulu under docks and mangrove trees and twitch the bait in those shady places where the snook hang out. Sometimes the snook are in a non-aggressive mood and don’t really want to feed aggressively. When that happens, I Superglue the Glass Minnow through the jighead, skip it under docks and mangroves and fish that Glass Minnow like it’s a shaky head worm that I’m fishing for bass. What I’ve learned about snook is that one of the most-effective ways to catch them is to make multiple casts to one spot. If you’re fishing around a dock or a boathouse on a point close to deep water, you know a snook probably is living in there. So instead of casting one time, and then moving on, I may make 20 or 30 casts to that same dock. A snook can be enticed to bite. So, by making multiple casts to the place that you believe is holding the snook, you can often aggravate the fish into biting.

I learned this technique from George Cochran, who is another of Strike King’s pros. If George has a lay-down log in the water that he believes is holding bass, he may make 15 or 20 casts to that same log to try to get that bass to bite. This same principle of multi-casting to the same spot has really started paying big dividends for me when I’m fishing for snook. This tactic works really well when the snook are holding under mangroves, and you can’t skip the bait up under the mangroves to get to the snook. By multi-casting to the same spot, you’ll pull those snook out of the mangroves, and they’ll come attack those Glass Minnows on the edges of the mangroves. This tremendous way to fish for snook has been extremely productive for me.

Shaw Grigsby on Fishing Saltwater with Strike King

Snook

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