04 / SALT / BERKLEY GULP
The reason Berkley Gulp dominates inshore fishing is not complicated: scent-loaded plastic in profiles that match the bait on every flat from the Chesapeake to the Keys. These are the colors and sizes that consistently produce snook, redfish, and speckled trout.
BERKLEY
Pearl white in a pint jar full of scent juice — the redfish and snook closer. The Alive! liquid keeps the formula fresh between fish, and the 4" profile matches the bait shrimp everything inshore wants to eat.
BERKLEY
Nuclear Chicken is the color that makes no biological sense and yet consistently puts trout and redfish in the box. The 5" Jerk Shad profile gives it the shimmy that triggers reaction strikes when shrimp colors go cold.
BERKLEY
Under $9 and it'll out-produce half the baits in your dry storage. Nuclear Chicken on a jig head under a popping cork is the no-overthinking setup for flounder and trout in murky backwater.
BERKLEY
New Penny matches the color of a live shrimp in skinny grass flat water better than almost anything on the market. At $6, you can afford to fish it into the rocks, which is where the snook live anyway.
BERKLEY
When the inshore bite shifts from shrimp to finger mullet — usually late summer — this is the bait you reach for. The paddle tail gives it real swimming action on a light jig head, and the Gulp scent trail does the rest.
BERKLEY
Six inches of pearl white scented plastic is the big-trout bait when schoolies ignore everything else. Rig it weedless, work it over oyster bars on a slow retrieve, and find out how big the speckled trout get in your creek.
ALL PICKS
Inshore Jerks.