# Navarre Pier fishing with hardtails



## Pi Lvr83 (Oct 6, 2011)

I catch a lot of hardtails yesterday and tried to use as bait. All I caught were small sail catfish. What kind of fish should I be able to catch with frozen hardtail cut up as bait?

Am I doing it all wrong?


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## deersniper270 (Apr 29, 2009)

Since catfish eat anything, they will always be something your probably going to catch. You should be able to catch kings and spanish with them too. Just depends if anything besides the catfish, who are always around, is there. The bigger the hardtail are the better chance for kings, but the smaller ones with catch spanish. Being the cold season is upon us, the kings are probably not going to be as close.


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## eym_sirius (Oct 17, 2007)

With frozen hardtail cut up, you can expect to catch bottom feeders, like catfish, rays, small sharks, remoras, maybe redfish. A king mackerel will hit a live hardtail, generally in deeper water away from the surf. Spanish, while they may not hit most cut bait, they will hit half of a cigar minnnow when they won't hit anything else. Without being able to show you how to rig, I can tell you that the best thing that you can do is to watch, copy what others are doing and ask successful fishermen for tips.
I'm not a real big fan of using hard tails for cut bait. If I were going to use a natural bait, I'd probably opt for fresh-dead (not frozen) peeled shrimp, with which you can catch pompano, whiting, redfish, black drum and of course -- hardtails. For Spanish, I'm throwing a gotcha plug or the previously mentioned half-a-cig. For king mackerel, it's a whole cigar minnow, a lively hardtail, or other baitfish.
This is a good time of year to fish!


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## Hydro Therapy 2 (Sep 11, 2008)

Catfish are a pain in the net.


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