Monthly Archives: October 2013

The first of the week started out with rain and hard northeast winds.  I didn’t get back out on the water until Wednesday.  The tides were right this week for afternoon fishing and the redfish bite was really good.  I have started out a little early in the afternoon for the redfish bite, and made a few stops at some normal trout hangouts with no luck.  

As the oyster beds started showing it was game on for the redfish in the 23” to 27” size!  We averaged about six to eight of this size fish per person on the afternoon half-day trips.  As the air and water temperatures start dropping the fishing will get better and better with all the inshore species such as redfish, trout and black drum.  

The main ingredient to a good predictable bite is some stable weather. When that isn’t happening, I adjust my strategy to follow the fish’s behavior.  For example, the last couple of weeks, we have had a lot of northeast winds that have been holding the water in and not letting it fall out like it normally does. When this happens the fish change their normal habits and are hard to find.  During this time, my typical hot spots haven’t been producing, so I’ve hit the areas we don’t typically fish to find them.  Understanding and following these fish and their behaviors is the best way to have a productive trip.   

The week of Sept 30th through October 6th brought some pretty strong Northeast winds that held the water in the river to the point where our low tides never truly got low.  When the water never gets low it has a bad effect on our traditional outgoing low tide fishing.  The baitfish spread out, and don’t get bunched up in the regular places they’re forced to go on extremely low tides.  Fishing up in the river and backcountry creeks was tough with few fish caught in the places we normally fish.  Fishing for redfish was pretty good around the bridges and docks near the inlet.  This is common during this time of year on the slower ends of the tide. 

Toward the end of the week we had flood high tides that occur this time of year, on the new moon and full moon.  The redfish normally get up in the spartina grass, tailing. But due to the west wind and the smaller tides, the fish didn’t really move into the grass as they normally do.   So we changed our strategy and caught fish in the creek fingers just adjacent to the grass flats, pushing around the edges slurping shrimp. 

 October 7th – 13th the tides seemed to get somewhat back to normal and the fishing did as well.  The river and backcountry creeks this week were full of 15” – 17” redfish.  You could probably catch 50 of these in a half-day trip if you want.  The trick has been to find the places that are holding the slot fish.  The bigger fish have been concentrated in several places I fish.  When we found them, there was plenty of fun to be had!  […]