Greg, Raymond, and I fished the marsh near Surfside, Texas this morning searching for redfish. Tides were still running at above normal levels and there wasn’t much tidal movement until later in the afternoon, so we knew we were in for a challenge. We pounded the shorelines early without much to show for our efforts, although there was an abundance of nervous shad, mullet, and shrimp in and around the spartina grass. Mid-morning I stumbled onto a pattern that produced.
The fish were not relating to the shorelines or shoreline structure, but were over shell in 2′ of water. By this point in the day the three of us had spread out to cover more water. About the time I started to consistently get bites I got a call from Greg informing me that he had finally picked up a few fish. Greg was on the opposite end of the marsh nearly a mile away and he said he found a viable pattern. He then explained the same pattern that I had just put together. I guess great minds think alike, or maybe it was just a coincidence that we reached the same deduction.
We continued to sporadically catch fish and get blowups while drifting over shell in open water until noon when we left. All fish were caught on skitterwalks with the redfish variety being favored the most. Cannibals. A stop and go retrieve produced the most strikes. We landed between 8-10 redfish ranging from 19″ – 28.5″ and missed plenty of fish due to short strikes or pulled hooks. As you can see from the pictures below that the fish that did eat, ate well.
