Snap, Crackle, Pop

The February red drum bite in the Cape Fear area can ignite like a string of firecrackers if you know how to light the fuse.

The dead of winter. It’s a term that perfectly describes February. The second month of the year in the South, particularly along the North Carolina coast, is usually as lively as a graveyard at midnight when it comes to saltwater fishing.

Most inshore species have fled the cold water, high-tailing it out the inlets to go offshore in search of more hospitable temperatures.

February, in fact, is when inshore anglers spend most of their free time hunkered down in front of a warm fire in their workshops, repairing and re-greasing reels, stripping off old line and re-spooling with new, checking rod blanks and ferrules for cracks and guides for imperfections.

Happily, because the Tarheel State is in the South, February is only a few weeks away from the start of spring, which means it usually sees a few periods of warmish weather. During those respites from the cold, winds will cease, the sun will shine and shallow creeks from Wilmington to Southport will heat up a few degrees. The change in temperature can ignite a red drum bite like a string of firecrackers.

“Yeah, February is one of the toughest fishing months of the year,” said Lewis Emery, a Wilmington inshore guide. “The weather will be the biggest obstacle. The best thing to do is to try and pick the days where you’ll have two or three 60-degree days in a row.”

Emery, who works at Carolina Beach’s Island Tackle & Hardware and operates Tails Up Charters said patience will be a key to successful redfish trips.

“If it’s been cold for a while, it won’t do any good to go the first day of a warm spell,” said Emery (910-617-2194). “You need to wait until the second day, ideally the third day.”

What happens, he said, is that shallow water at the backs of small feeder creeks will start to warm.

“If you can find a small feeder creek that’s got a mud bottom, that’s the best situation,” Emery said. “Because the mud is dark, and the water is usually clear in February, sunlight penetrates easily. And that dark mud on the bottom absorbs heat and radiates it back into the water.

“You might have a 5-degree swing in temperature at the backs of these creeks and at mouths of the main creeks.

“Redfish will stack up in those little bitty creeks to get warm.”

The ideal water temperature to seek shallow, sunning red drum is 55 degrees.

“That seems to be the magic number,” Emery said. “It’s not that there’ll be a lot of baitfish in shallow water, although you can find mud minnows; they’re in the water all year long. But when the water temperature falls to around 50 degrees, reds get lethargic. But when it gets to 55 degrees, they get happy and aggressive. And they’ll hit just about any lure or bait you throw at them.”

Some of the streams that hold winter reds include Walden Creek (across the Cape Fear River from Fort Fisher State Park), Dutchman Creek near Frazier Neck (west of Southport off the Intracoastal Waterway), the Elizabeth River and its feeder creeks in the marsh (behind Caswell Beach), the creeks off the Cape Fear River at Bald Head Island, and, of course, the tidal creeks in the bays (Buzzard’s, Second Bay) between the Fort Fisher Ramp and the north end of Bald Head.

“Try to pick days to fish when you have a falling, high tide starting at 3 or 4 p.m.,” Emery said. “The backs of those creeks can have a temperature spike in the afternoon that’ll turn on the redfish bite.

“There won’t be much baitfish in the water, but (heated water) gives reds an opportunity to eat. It thaws ’em out and makes ’em want to eat.”

Emery said mud minnows are the best live baits to fish in February, mainly because nothing else is available.

“There’ll be some mullet and a few baby shrimp, but not a lot,” he said. “You also can use frozen baits to catch reds, if you’ve saved some (from summer and fall).”

Emery prefers Shimano Stradic 3000 spinning reels with 10-pound Power Pro braid or Ultracast Visi-Braid and one to 1½ feet of 25-pound fluorocarbon leader. His rods are 7- to 7½-foot J.B. Custom models.

“Because the water will be so clear, you’ll want to throw (a lure) that looks like a natural bait, a silver mullet color,” Emery said. “DOA and Saltwater Assassins with paddletails are good soft-plastic minnow-imitators.”

Like a freshwater bass fisherman, he often adds a secondary attraction to lures. Redfish are basically bottom feeders, so they use scent as well as sight to find food.

“I use mullet-scented Lunker Sauce (on lures),” Emery said. “It’s a great way to get more strikes, and you’ll get more aggressive strikes, too.”

With baitfish rare in winter, there’s no reason for reds to check the surface, so topwater lures are useless. That means Emery sticks to sinking lures

“You also have to use lighter lures because winter reds spook easily,” he said. “Big lure splashes scatter fish. Besides that, they’ll often be a foot of water, and if you can see them, they can see you.”

When he’s casting soft-plastic and jig-head combinations, Emery throws eighth-ounce heads. Sometimes, instead of a jighead, he’ll choose a 91768 UB Mustad hook, an eighth-ounce ultra-point model, in 2/0 to 5/0 sizes, threading a soft-plastic lure onto the hook.

“Bayou Buck makes a weedless hook called a Shrimp Paler,” Emery said. “You can use it as a jig or weedless hook. It only weighs a quarter-ounce.”

His favorite shallow-water soft-plastic lures include Gulp! and 5-inch Jerk Shad.

“There’s also a 3-inch orange shrimp,” he said. “The Shrimp Paler is a versatile way to use it. When it hits the water, it doesn’t make a big noisy splash.”

Proximity to redfish in shallow, clear water is a concern when it comes to casting. Sometimes though, they’ll let anglers get close to them.

“How close you can get (to redfish) depends on a person’s ability to cast and (the fish’s) attitude,” Emery said.

“If you’ve got ‘happy’ fish — they’ll have their fins out of the water — you can get to within 10 feet of ’em,” he said.

“Happy” redfish feed and concentrate on food sources instead of external danger.

“But if you see a school that’s moving slowly or just sitting there, you shouldn’t get closer than 40 or 50 feet.” Emery said. “You make a slight boat noise or start your trolling motor, and they’ll zoom off.”

One common mistake of anglers who spook redfish is to chase and cast at them.

“A lot of people will see spooked reds and say, ‘Oh, there goes a school’ and they’ll cast at them and spook them even worse,” Emery said. “If they’d just sit still and wait five or 10 minutes, the school would settle down, and they could ease up to them and fish them again.”

Fish sizes will vary with the majority of winter reds being “puppy” sized — mid-slot and smaller.

“You’ll catch a lot of ‘rat reds’ —16- to 18-inch fish — but occasionally you’ll get into a 30-inch fish,” Emery said.