Drawing on his bass-fishing background, one North Carolina guide is catching more redfish.
As Dave Eakins blistered a blue streak across the New River, a thought came to mind; something seems out of place. Coastal rivers are home to flat-bottom skiffs, flats boat, and bay boats — not bass boats, but that’s how a bass pro turned redfish chaser rolls. Take what worked for largemouth bass and apply those techniques to a different set of circumstances, like using side-scan technology to find redfish hangouts and catch them with square-bill crankbaits.
Largemouth bass and red drum are different species with similar characteristics, so it only figures that fishing techniques for the two should go hand in hand. Like the largemouth, many redfish retreat to creeks when temperatures cool in early winter, chasing baitfish that clamor into them, searching for stable temperatures. Eakins, who runs Drum Chasing Charters, discovered that reds in these creeks are very cover-oriented, just like largemouths, hugging stumps and sunken logs and using them as places to ambush bait.
That’s great news, especially if you’re a local and know the locations of all the obstructions that might eat lower units. But what if you’re not? Most of these prime locations are in 2 to 6 feet of water, where traditional depth finders reading the bottom vertically are of little use, but they certainly can’t be seen from the surface. It helps to have a pair of eyes underwater in the shallows.
Side-scan sonar isn’t new, but it is not commonly utilized in saltwater. One reason may be that side-scan was not originally designed to spot fish, but rather the cover that harbors them, which is absent in many saltwater scenarios. The New River, however, is full of such cover, and a side-scan unit can spot it for more than 200 feet on both sides of the boat, and it can operate in only 2 to 3 of water.
While a good side-scan unit takes the guesswork out of finding cover, it’s not the only common link between Eakins’ bass and redfish tactics. Rather than grabbing a handful of saltwater baits, he attacks the cover with a bass bait.
“The square-bill crankbait is one of my favorites,” Eakins said. “I knew they would eat it.”
Eakins likes Strike King’s KVD 2.5, a fat little crankbait that looks surprisingly like a menhaden. The bait has a tight wobble that is deadly in bass fishing, but somewhat absent on the saltwater scene.
“Pearl with a black back is my favorite color,” said Eakins, “it’s kind of a mullet color. On low-light days, chartreuse, crawdad, and sexy shad are good.”
Out of the box, the bait will run between 3 and 5 feet deep, which is a good average depth, but Eakins will make his own modifications.
“To make a shallower-running bait, I cut or shave down the lip, so it won’t dig into the mud,” he said. “Then, I can keep up the retrieve speed when they’re shallow, because they want it running fast.”
Conversely, Eakins adds to his bait when a cold snap drives reds off a ledge.
“I put an aluminum lip on the bait to get a few more feet out of it,” he said. “Then it will go in the 7- to 8-foot range. Going to a thinner diameter line will also make it dive deeper.”
When Eakins wants something different, he goes to other familiar bass baits, including swim baits and spinnerbaits. Like the square-bill that deflects off cover, these lures are also relatively snag-poof. Eakins favors Salty Bay paddletails and often threads them onto a Redfish Magic spinnerbait; a beefed-up version of the largemouth favorite with one big thumping Colorado blade.
Eakins will focus his attention on the creeks between the NC 172 bridge between Camp Lejeune and Sneads Ferry and Jacksonville, believing they have the most wooden cover. He also notes the size of a creek doesn’t dictate the size or quantity of fish; cover, baitfish and a sufficient depth to provide protection from cold snaps are the key elements.
Those cold snaps present some redfish with a choice: wait out winter in the creeks or follow the mass exodus of baitfish and shrimp into the ocean.
“There will always be a segment of fish that will stay in the creeks,” said Lee Paramore, a biologist with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries. “Age-1 fish will stay all winter, along with a pretty good portion of age-2 fish. When they start getting to age-3, they will decline in availability in the river. They are sexually mature and start moving off with the spawning fish. By age-4, they are gone.”
In these fisheries where mature specimens cycle out, the availability of slot-size redfish (18 to 27 inches) rests on the spawning success of the adults from two years earlier.
“It’s important for people to understand that slot-size red drum are a little bit of age-1 fish, a lot of age-2 fish, and a little bit of age-3,” Paramore said. “There are annual fluctuations in these year-classes. One year, we may have a whole lot of red drum in the fishery. That is a reflection on one year-class when talking about legal-size fish.
“The year-class from 2011 was extraordinary; those were the fish being caught in 2013,” he said. “The 2013 year class is smaller; those are the fish being caught this past summer that are slot-size. However, the 2014 year-class is more of an average year; it looks better based on our surveys.
“The fish that stay in the creeks like muddy flats; they seek out shallow places that warm up the fastest in the heat of the day, either in the creeks themselves or on the edges of the river. Red drum tend to seek out the same areas from year to year; they are somewhat predictable.”
Eakins echoes this predictability when concerning isolated stumps.
“It’s like bass fishing. When you pluck a dominate fish off an isolated piece of cover and put him in the livewell, you can come back later and another fish will take its place,” he said. “Reds are the same way. The biggest will come from stumps like that near a drop-off into deeper water.
“When we first start to have cool nights in the fall, the reds will transition from the bays to the mouths of the creeks. The colder it gets, the further back they will go. They’ll be adjacent to the deeper curves that have 9 or 10 feet of water in them. I think that’s because the bait will be in that hole, where the water is more stable.”
Although a portion of catchable reds left with the cold air, the remnants of resident fish are fair game.
“You can count on double-digit days,” Eakins said. “On a good day, you might catch 20 to 30.”
The year-1 fish, which are sub-slot and often referred to as “rat reds,” will be ever-present. While those fish are better than empty water, you can rest assured the larger specimens are in there as well.
“Some days you have to wade through a lot of smaller fish, and some days you catch fish in the 5-, 6- and 7-pound range all day.”
DESTINATION INFORMATION
HOW TO GET THERE — The New River is most-easily accessed from Sneads Ferry and Jacksonville. US 17 will get you close to both; NC 210 and NC 172 for Sneads Ferry and NC 258 for Jacksonville. Fulcher’s Landing on Sneads Ferry is a popular public ramp. New River Waterfront Park has a popular boat ramp that serves Jacksonville.
WHEN TO GO — Reds start to move into the creeks off the New River in October, but November and December are the prime months. Cold temperatures will shut things down in January and February.
BEST TECHNIQUES — Baitcasting combos spooled with 40-pound braid, with a 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon leader are perfect for this type of fishing; for spinning tackle, 10- to 20-pound braid with a fluorocarbon leader is sufficient. Small, square-billed crankbaits like a KVD 2.5 are great to fish around shallow, wooden cover. Spinnerbaits and swimbaits are other bass baits that often prove irresistible to red drum. Mullet colors are winners in normal conditions; go to brighter colors in stained water.
FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Dave Eakins, Drum Chasing Charters, 910-545-4781; Ricky Kellum, Speckled Specialist Inshore Fishing Charters, 910-330-2745. See also Guides and Charters in Classifieds.
ACCOMMODATIONS — The Seward Inn, 910-347-0469, www.theseawardinn.com; Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, Sneads Ferry, 888-465-4219, www.hiexpress.com/snedsferrync; Topsail Shores Inn, 910-685-0969, www.topsailshoresinn.com; Holiday Inn Express, Jacksonville, 800-315-2606, www.hiexpress.com/Jacksonville.
MAPS — Capt. Segull’s Nautical Charts, 888-473-4855, www.captainsegullcharts.com; GMCO’s Chartbook of North Carolina, 88-420-6277, www.gmcomaps.com; Sealake Fishing Guides, 800-411-0185, www.thegoodspots.com.
