The fishing has been slow last few weeks mainly due to my indecision and obstinacy. I dislike transition periods because I have a hard time changing tactics and targeting different species when my focus has been so narrow. For three quarters of the year my concentration is singlar: redfish.
When December rolls around and water temperatures begin to dip into the 50’s redfish start to become less predictable. They move out of shallow water in search of deep hide-outs with plenty of forage. That leaves a redfish junkie like me with fewer options. I can stubbornly target redfish in shallow water, but I know success is going to hit-or-miss. Or I can target trout that have not yet fully committed to their winter ways just yet.
Stubborness won out until recently when I made the decision to leave mucky, shallow domains in exchange for deep oyster-ridden slightly less mucky areas in search for big fang-tooth yellow-mouths. I have been rewarded with some solid fish although the bite has been rather slow. The condtions still stacked the fish and bait deep yet. One more strong front should do the trick. The trout have been falling to Corky’s and TTF Hackberry Hustlers.
I commonly catch more flatties this time of year than any other because I finally force myself to slow down enough to produce a strike from lethargic fish.
There redfish are certainly still around if you get the right conditions. I met up with Brice one day last week at a spot that typically produces both trout and reds. I could never find the trout and Brice managed to catch a couple, but we did find the redfish stacked up in creek channels and drains inside the marsh. I had one of my best redfish days of the year and Brice landed the most redfish he ever landed in one day. Roughly, I believe we landed between 70-80 redfish on the day.
We crab walked our kayaks down the edges of a channel that was 3-7′ deep. We all of our fish on either TTF Hackberry Hustlers or TTF Flats Minnows. Dark colors like morning glory seemed to work better in the stained water.
Deform tailed…
