Road To Redfish – The Right Conditions
Gary Hurley tosses an imitation shrimp fly while Capt. Jon Huff poles along a protected flat north of Wrighsville Beach.
Knowing that our schedules were going to becoming harder to mesh, with Gary starting to teach classes and me getting busier with the fall fishing heating up, we had to work extra hard just to get a couple of hours one afternoon to go throw the fly around and try to catch a redfish. Catching a red on the fly has been our ultimate goal during this entire series, and we were both excited to get the chance to fish an area that had been holding good numbers of fish for the past few weeks.
I had been planning, in my head, the week prior, trying to figure out where we might be able to put the boat in, run a short way, fish for two hours, catch a red, and then be back in time for a prior commitment. I won’t say who had the prior commitment, but I’m sure that if we could have fished till dusk we would have had shots at reds.
We didn’t catch a fish or even have a shot at one, and the only excuse I have is that we didn’t fish for long enough. So many other pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, were setting up perfectly together that I really believed we had a better than usual chance to get some good shots at reds in only two hours of actual fishing time.
The wind, if there has to be some wind, was perfect for this spot. It was in the lee of a light easterly sea breeze. Predicting the tides for the area that I was thinking about is fairly difficult as it is a good distance from any inlet, but we did fish for an hour during a very good part of the tide for this flat. Unfortunately, the only sign of reds that we saw were mud trails that some small single or doubles may have made vacating the path of the boat as we searched the flat looking for the size-able schools of mid-slot reds that were prowling this same flat only a week earlier.
And as much as I would have liked to blame Gary’s casting, he was actually fishing the area efficiently and with enough distance to fool the reds that I had caught here on trips prior.
This brings us to the major focus of this article. There are so many factors contributing to a successful fly fishing trip for reds that even though many of the factors may be in your favor just one known or unknown piece of the puzzle may be out of place and cause the fish to change their habits or even relocate completely (as I suspect that they did for the trip that Gary and I took).
The first major factor is location, and in our area it seems to me that a flat with a decent escape route or proximity to a deeper channel and with enough food to support numbers of fish will usually hold reds during some part of the tide almost year-round. A good escape route seems very important to the reds, and a flat that could seem perfect otherwise, but has nothing other than shallow water for hundreds of yards, will seldom hold reds.
I have seen fish leave a specific flat when spooked the same way on different trips, moving quickly to deeper water and settling down to escape undetected too many times, to be merely happenstance. They definitely seem to be deliberately escaping the same way every time.
Another big factor is the wind, and for fly fishing it’s the less wind the better. Light or no wind situations become the easiest to locate the reds, as telltale dimples or subtle wakes are much easier to spot on a glassy surface. The redfish around here also seem to “tail,” or stick their tails out of the water, while feeding much better during light wind situations. If the sand gnats are biting, you have a better than average chance of finding tailing fish as the surface of the water will usually be calm and glassy.
Light winds also make it much easier to present the fly, and a stiff breeze can challenge any fly caster. It is also a no-brainer that poling a flats boat is much more enjoyable when you don’t have to contend with the wind. However, we all know that getting the wind to cooperate with your fishing schedule can be next to impossible, and oftentimes you need to choose a location that provides a lee shore or a place to fish out of the wind.
Next on the list of things to consider while choosing a spot to sight fish reds on the fly is tide. As I mentioned before, a suitable flat will hold feeding fish for at least a portion of a certain tide. I frequently get asked the question: “When is the best tide to fish for reds?” My standard answer is: “I like to have different spots that should be productive on each stage of every tide.”
This means that there are places that I want to fish at specific times during the tide, places that have been productive in the past. Some flats are better on high tides, and some areas produce better at low tide. And then there are other places to be on every tide in-between.
Now there are many other factors contributing to the availability of reds on any given flat, and some of them are predictable while other factors are not. Seasonal changes and bait migrations are near impossible to predict, but they will greatly affect the actions and attitude of our shallow water reds. Weather patterns, moon phases, and pressure changes will also affect the mood and location of redfish, but not very predictably.
So if you get the chance to get out on the water, don’t let certain factors keep you on dry land, as even though you will learn certain patterns (and the guidelines I have illustrated above may give you a good starting point), there are very few steadfast rules regarding redfish. You could have good fishing when conditions would lead you to believe that you won’t, and you may not catch much when a lot of factors are leaning your way.
This I have proven to myself time and time again, and Gary found it out the other day. I still believe, though, that if I had just had another hour or two then we could have been successful, but I guess there might be times when a dinner party takes precedence over fishing? Maybe?
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you on the water.
Capt. Jon Huff is owner operator of Circle H Charters, an inshore fly and light tackle guide service based out of Wrightsville Beach. Jon splits his time between running inshore charters, fishing offshore tournaments, and co-managing Intracoastal Angler. (910) 617-2619, www.circlehcharters.com
