Got me a fancy pedal drive kayak which has inspired me to post here once again. I’ve been hitting the oyster flats in between ji and folly and have only managed to scrounge up a small trout and a rat red. I’ve only really fished the bottom of the outgoing tide or the bottom of the incoming so not quite the tides I’m looking for. My goal is to sight fish for reds otf in the skinny water but I think i’m about 4 months too early. I’m working the deeper, moving water and oyster beds with popping corks and plastics, of course with little luck. I think I need to be there at for the top half of the tides. any advice is much appreciated
also after quick journey through the recent reports i’ve learned that uploading pictures is still a herculean feat, so I won’t bother
I think its a common misconception that the reds aren’t on the marsh flats at certain times of the year. I’ve caught them on the flats from March to December and I’m confident they’re up there in January and February, I just don’t go then. It’s certainly more active in the fall when the summer temperatures start to dip. That’s the magic time when you could see multiple tailing fish at the same time. The day that I consider my best day ever I caught only one fish, but I saw over thirty tails. You’ll have those days, but not often. Most times, you’ll be happy just to see a handful of tailers or cruisers.
Put the time in on google earth and find flats that you can access with your yak. Sol Legre has flats close to the ramp. Some of them hold fish on the regular and some not so much. Don’t be afraid to get out and walk the flats either. You’ll learn quickly where you can and can’t walk. Short sparse grass is good walking. Tall thick grass is not so good walking and you could wind up up to your knees in pluff mud. Anyone who has walked the flats has done it
couple he mist:
cargo shorts will hold a tallboy in each front pocket. protip for waitin on tide to come in.
when they eat, they’ll eat anything in the vicinity. i don’t flyfish well cause Im a man. my sons do cause challenging and stuff. small johnsons spoons and doa shrumps have been dependable for me.
marshchiggers were a hotly debaited topic on here circa 2008. I think polyball or one of the octogenarians told me they don’t exist. three of us got a nice infestation of em once. they’re prolific climbers. look it up. hose off your legs or wipe em down with hand sanitizer or something when you exit the flat. get these once and you won’t forget that I tole you this.
go spend time on the same flat. you’ll figure out where the ingress egress is.
Some good info up there. The only thing I’d add is that you need to learn the Texas rig for flats fishing. That will help you by saving time and giving you the ability to cover more ground.
Now here is my pro tip for you. After you google Texas Rig and figure our what I am talking about and how to rig it, do this… slide a small barrel swivel over the barb end of the hook before hiding the point in the back of the bait. By doing that when you get caught in the grass (and you will get caught in the grass) the bitter end of your leader is tugging mid-hook on your presentation vs on the eye where the bait will get slid down and run funky.
Nobody likes funky running bait.
I call that the Tennessee Rig.
My guess is Kerry Browning might benefit by using that presentation over those oyster bars on windy days too.
Some great advice above. My experience is that the season for fishing high tide in the grass coincides with bait, starts around when fiddlers come out of hibernation and ends Halloween-2 weeks after once overnight low air temp goes below 50. Not until about now (July 4th) that the finger mullet grow big enough to cast net (assuming 3/8 inch net). That said though see redfish out there from May-July, have not had much luck catching them as compared to Aug-Nov.
As mentioned, seeing them vs catching them very different. They spook real easy so need to be careful in how you walk/paddle around. Have observed them to be passive much more often than aggressive. Very rarely have caught without seeing or hearing them first so if you’re not seeing swirls or hearing surface blow ups, move on.
Have found that they primarily feed in limited time window (20-30 mins) relative to water level/top of the tide. Again you’ll know because you’ll hear and see it. General rule for sight casting is that the closer the water gets to your knees the more you’re flying blind, advantage to the fish though wind speed a big factor as well.
Easiest thing you can do is castnet shrimp/finger mullet and fish on a carolina rig. You will snag in grass here and there but pretty easy to work it free and you can fish much higher grass than if try artificials/fly which is more difficult (big learning curve). Would look to fish there an hour before until an hour after peak high tide. Huge advantage of your kayak is you can find the little channels where the water enters the grass and fish there starting around 1/3 of the way through the start of incoming tide, then can turn around and go back 1/3 of the way through the start of outgoing.
Would recommend checking out Red Fish Blue Tails on YouTube, he fishes your area and does a lot of this type of fishing. Also have found following the_darth_wader on Instagram useful for when & how much he’s posting fish pics. For the record, don’t know either of them, not
[quote]Thanks Dick,now I understand.[/quote=Originally posted by sman
Thanks! Completely got it now and absolutely see the benefit. I have found another way to keep bait “ especially z Mann products on. I’ll post a YouTube or description when I’m not recovering from a fish fry! It’s not the drinking but everything that goes into making it successful. GreaT fourth.
I showed Bink that rig back during the Regan days on Dale Hollow Lake one day while fishing the spartina grass. Ole Bink fancied himself a big time bass fisherman and even finished 2nd one time in a Bassmaster tourney back in the spring of 2004 on Lake Eufaula in Alabama. By then he was on his 3rd wife and drunk all the time. I’m surprised he even remembered the Tennessee rig.
The Chatterbait inventor and innovator used to post here on a regular basis. He won’t come back either, although I’ve only asked once. RadDaddy was an awesome resource here before the dark times,it’s just too bad he got treated like one of Bink’s ex wifes stepchildren or he might have stayed.
Anyway, hope the Tennessee Rig helps
Edited to add—The smaller barrel swivels are mo-bedda than the bigguns
tallboys in my pockets is probably the best piece of advice on this thread marsh chiggers are for real, definitely will remember the sanitizer next time but usually I wear wade pants
And I reckon if “marsh chiggers” are real, then they don’t bother this Binyah. Perhaps some of those sensitive , girly, non- buggy type dudes? I’ve lived here on the salt marsh for 50+ years, played in it, skim boarded in it, caught fiddlers in it, killed marsh hens in it, built forts in it, waded for spot tailed bass in it, shot coyotes in it, trapped coons in it, cut palm fronds for duck blinds in it, and everything else in the salt marsh, never one “ marsh chigger!”
I’d say my biggest problem bug here on the marsh is that dammed horsefly……noseeums are a pain in the ass, but nowhere near the bite of a horsefly.
I can see it now… Peepal will be buying wading pants, and wearing cargo shorts over the top of them… He’ll be triple layered with the banana hammock underneath…
