How to catch fall redfish, big and small
According to Redfin Charters guide Justin Carter, November can be a month filled with either bull redfish or juvenile puppy drum coming over the side of the boat. Or perhaps even both. It just depends on the weather.
Carter said the last few years, temperatures have stayed moderate throughout the Charleston area well into December, keeping water temperatures at a balmy 70 degrees all month.
After having targeted adult redfish for most of the summer and into the fall, Carter said it’s very possible to follow large schools of fish as they head offshore. Most of this action takes place out to 60 feet of water, and generally less than 10 miles off the coast.
“If these huge schools of bull reds are your goal, expect to spend a lot of time riding and looking for them,” said Carter. “There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to their movement. Sometimes they’ll hang out around the wrecks. And that’s generally where I start looking.”
Carter said the schools often stay submerged around the wrecks but will come to the surface in large numbers when they get excited. Just like fishing schools inshore, he doesn’t like to get too close to the school when he’s trying to catch them.
“My go-to bait is a 1-ounce jighead paired with a Z-Man DieZel in either 5 or 7 inch size,” he said. “When you find them up on the surface, they’ll hit about anything. But I want something I can throw a long distance with accuracy so I can land the bait several feet out in front of the school and work it back to them.”
Get ‘em inshore too
Back inshore, Carter said anglers can expect the redfish bite to get easier as the available supply of bait runs out. This creates more competition for the available food supply.
“Typically the mullet run is over and the shrimp are out of the creeks by November. So you can expect the bite to be very aggressive,” said Carter. “Both trout and redfish are feeding hard to get ready for the coming winter.”
He said don’t look for any tightly schooled redfish yet. That won’t start happeneing until later in December. Right now though, he expects to find loose groups of two, three or four fish on nearly every point, every creek mouth and every boat dock, provided it’s got the right elements to hold fish. The common factor is they’re almost all shallow water situations.
“I get a lot of information by watching the shoreline, looking at what the birds are doing,” he said. “If you see several seagulls just sitting on the bank facing the water, they’re there for a reason. Probably because redfish are pushing what little bait they can find up into the shallows to feed. And that’s an advantage for the birds to get in on the action.”
Another good inshore scenario is a choke point. He describes a choke point as an area where you have a wide shallow creek flow that gets narrowed down by an oyster rake or sandbar on either side with water pouring through.
To target this area, he will ease in from the downstream side and pole to where his clients can reach the rushing water.
“The good thing is your presentation doesn’t have to be so precise because the reds will come out and get the bait,” he said. “We usually start by throwing Chatterbaits or a 3-inch paddletail until the fish wise up to what’s going on and the action slows down. When they stop hitting artificials then it’s time to hook up the popping corks and float a live shrimp or mud minnow through the chute and get the bite started again. I’ve had whole ½-day trips where we sat in one spot and caught fish as quick as my clients could get the next cast out to them.”
On a final note, Carter said don’t overlook the high tailing tides that will occur around the full and new moons. The mullet may be gone, but there are still enough fiddler crabs bumping around in the grass to get redfish interested.
“Again, the good thing here is the fish are hungry. It’s that fall drive to pack it on. So any decent cast or presentation is likely to get looked at because the fish are just not as spooky as they would be during the winter and spring.”
Catch-and-release
In order to understand how catch-and-release impacted the state’s redfish populations, the South Carolina Dept. of Natural Resources began a Redfish Catch-and-Release Study to determine how redfish were being caught and how they were released in order to make proper recommendations to conserve the fishery amid an ever-increasing expansion of redfish as a targeted species.
The study involved surveying more than 1400 anglers on their redfishing preferences. Ninety percent of anglers released fish that they caught. Seventy percent used live or natural baits, and almost 47 percent used standard “J” hooks compared to 34.5 percent who used circle hooks.
The second phase of the study involved field studies of local volunteer guides in the Georgetown, Charleston, and Beaufort areas.
Choose the right hook
In two separate studies, one involving small hooks in shallow water and another involving larger hooks in deep water, head-to-head comparisons were made between “J” hooks, offset circle hooks and non-offset circle hooks. Fish that were caught in the jaw, forward of the throat plates, were released on site while fish that were “gut hooked” were monitored at the state’s mariculture center in holding ponds for 48 hours.
Conclusions of the study showed that non-offset circle hooks gut hooked the least number of fish in both studies (sub-adults and adults). Offset circle hooks were intermediate. J-hooks gut hooked the most fish in both studies.
Despite the fact that offset circle hooks gut hooked an intermediate number of fish, the largest percentage of these fish died as a result of hooking injuries. When fishing for adult red drum, non-offset circle hooks caught almost twice as many fish as J-hooks did. They also gut hooked substantially fewer fish than J-hooks did. Evidence was overwhelming that the best hook to use when releasing red drum is the non-offset circle hook.
Best practices to help redfish
Bill Roumillat, Fisheries Biologist for the South Carolina Dept. of Natural Resources who oversaw the agency’s Catch-and-Release Study, offers important advice for catch-and-release redfish.
Use appropriate tackle (at least 12-pound test fishing line) and bring the fish in quickly. Fighting a fish to exhaustion may increase its possibility of dying.
Use non-offset circle hooks. This study has shown that circle hooks catch sub-adult red drum in the jaw more than 90 percent of the time. Mortality is 1/5 of that with either offset circle hooks or J-hooks.
Handle the fish only with wet hands. Use a release tool such as needle-nosed pliers to remove the hook from the mouth of the fish.
If the point of the hook is lodged in the far back of the mouth or is beyond the crushing teeth in the back of the throat, leave the hook in place and cut the leader. A large percentage of these fish will survive.
For more information on the Red Drum Catch-and-Release Study, visit the agency’s website at www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/mrri/insh_fish/reddrum/reddrumportal1.htm.
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