Biscayne Bay shrimp run means excellent fishing for South Florida anglers

Many South Florida anglers are fond of saying that “everything eats a shrimp,” which makes the month of February a great time to catch tarpon in and around Biscayne Bay, as well as many other species in the bay and in Miami-Dade County’s offshore waters.

This month is when shrimp run, and hungry fish target the tasty crustaceans as they are carried by the tides through the bay and local inlets.

“February usually is when the best of the tarpon fishing starts to show up in Miami. It’s all live shrimp or artificial lures,” said Capt. Bouncer Smith (www.captbouncer.com), who fishes out of Miami Beach Marina on Bouncer’s Dusky 33. “If the shrimp are running it can be fantastic fly fishing at night. If the shrimp are running, the tarpon are popping on the surface. It’s like sight-casting to brook trout.

“With those shrimp runs come large numbers of mangrove snappers in the inlets and snook around the jetties and bridges. It’s really, really a fun time to fish. Also with the shrimp running, you’ll find good numbers of Spanish mackerel and kingfish relatively near shore. As the shrimp come out (the inlet) on the outgoing tide at the crack of dawn in the morning, it can be really, really exciting to fish a bucktail jig, or if you get some live shrimp, drift live shrimp just off the coast.”

Smith noted that tarpon fishing used to be excellent in inlets and just off the beaches when shrimp were running, but that has changed in recent years. The hard-fighting, acrobatic gamefish known as the silver king, which can exceed 100 pounds, has expanded its territory, the result being that tarpon can also be caught around bridges, docks and seawalls in Biscayne Bay.

“You may find them north or south of Haulover Inlet, you may find them north or south of Government Cut,” said Smith, who has been running fishing charters for more than 50 years and recently published his second book, Fish On: The Further Chronicles of Bouncer Smith, which is available at www.amazon.com. “But the last couple of years it’s been more like Broad Causeway, MacArthur Causeway, Rickenbacker Causeway and the south end of Key Biscayne.

“It used to be automatic around the inlets. It’s much more diversified now. A lot more dock lights. It offers a lot more opportunities for the small boater with more of the tarpon being in the bay, but it is overall more challenging than in the past.”

To fish for tarpon around bridges, Smith recommended using a spinning outfit with 20-pound braided line, a 40- or 50-pound fluorocarbon leader and a 7/0 circle hook. He hooks what he called “a nice-sized shrimp” through the mouth and out the top of its head, then makes a long cast, which is easy to do with the unweighted shrimp thanks to the light braid.

Smith said boaters should fish upcurrent of the bridge, which means water is flowing toward the bridge, and cast far out to the side of the bridge. Then let the bait drift with the current into the shadow line, which is the dark edge on the water cast by the bridge’s lights. Tarpon and other fish lurk in the shadows to ambush shrimp.

If your bait doesn’t get bit after it drifts into the shadow line, Smith said to reel it in and cast again, varying the length of the casts until you determine the location of the tarpon, which often favor a particular section of a bridge at different stages of the tide.

“You’ll find that these tarpon are laying nose into the current, waiting for the shrimp to drift to them,” he said. “If you want more relaxed fishing, then put a very small bobber eight to 10 feet above your shrimp, let it back so the bobber’s just short of the (bridge), and just hold the shrimp in the current and wait for a tarpon swimming up and down the shadow line to find the bait.”

Anglers can move their boats to different spots upstream of the bridge and drift back their shrimp until they find the tarpon. An even more efficient method, said Smith, “is to pull up to the shoreline, send somebody up on the bridge and have them walk down the bridge and spot where the tarpon are at and then tell which opening it is.”

Whether they’re free-lining live shrimp or fishing them under a bobber, Smith said anglers should also hook a shrimp on a Troll-Rite or Hookup jig to get a bait near the bottom, “because that’s where the mangrove snapper and the snook will be hiding while the tarpon are on the surface.”

The tarpon bite typically lasts into June. Shrimp usually run until about mid-April, at which time Smith switches to live crabs for tarpon bait.

This story was originally published February 8, 2020 at 5:25 PM.