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! All these fish were running between 24” to just under 27”, with a few nice 3 – 4 pound black drum mixed in. With the water temperatures dropping I expect the fishing to really take off with the redfish, trout and black drum. I also expect the trout bite to be extremely strong until we get some much colder water temperatures. Once that happens, the trout may slow down, but the redfish and black drum stays strong all the way through the fall and winter. 