Marvelous March

Warming weather heats up the redfish bite

Capt. Allen Jernigan (Breadman Ventures, 910-524-8913) turned his trolling motor, adjusting the direction of the boat’s travel, to miss an unseen object that he nevertheless knew was there. Then, stopping the boat in place, he made a cast. A few turns of the spinning reel into the retrieve, he hauled back with his rod to set the hook in a red drum’s jaw.

“There he is!” Jernigan shouted. “It feels like a nice one, too.” 

Turning on the trolling motor again to prevent the keeper redfish from fouling the line on the submerged tree, he kept the line taut until, eventually, the powerful fish was engulfed in his landing net.

“It’s always nice when a plan comes together,” he said. “This time of year, the wind is always blowing which means weather fronts are coming and going. You never know if, or how well, the fish are going to bite. One thing you can be sure of, though, it’s going to be windy.”

March is an on-the-edge month for many types of fishing. For red drum, it is especially so. Jernigan said the redfish can form large schools in colder weather, and it can be difficult to get them to bite. However, March is a harbinger of warmer air temperatures that usher in warmer water temperatures. Warm winds and rains can boost water temperatures by 10 degrees in a few days. The suspended schools start breaking up, and the smaller pods and single redfish start moving around more, looking for food.

Structure is key

“The main thing I look for is structure,” he said. “I found this sunken tree – roots, stump, trunk and all – by making about a million casts. If you snag it enough times, you will remember exactly where the structure is. You can always mark its location on a GPS, but you have to feel out the subtleties in its contours with casts. The trick is to get your lure an inch away from the structure without actually hooking it. If you have to move the boat to a lure to free it, the redfish leave for a time. You might have to wait 30 minutes or more for the fish to return and start biting again. I always have another structure nearby to head for, and fish there before returning to try again.”

Jernigan fishes the New River and Neuse River. The structure in both areas is essentially the same. He especially likes fishing submerged structures that other anglers can’t see, so they haven’t been “beaten to death” by their lures and bait rigs. The water is so shallow that such cover is generally found by trial and error, cruising along and casting to the banks from his 18-foot Mako with an 80-pound thrust Minn Kota trolling motor. Lower tides often help him find structure by sight. But the astronomical tide range of both rivers is not great. In fact, wind tides have more impact in the Neuse River than astronomical tides.

“I look for old dock pilings, oyster beds, riprap and points, as well as bends and holes in the creek channels,” he said. “Any anomaly could attract redfish. I fish with lures, mostly. I really like lures that resemble shrimp and minnows this time of year.”

Some of his favorite lures include the ¼-ounce Storm Shrimp in pink color and the MirrOlure 17MR in 808 colors (gold, black and orange). He touches them up with Pro Cure Shrimp scent if the fish are short-striking or otherwise appear to be lethargic.

“I mainly stick to the creeks,” he said. “One main reason is the wind. You have to find places where you can get out of it so you can make accurate casts and keep the boat oriented properly to the structure. The other reason is that the creeks warm up faster. Therefore, the bait becomes active in the creeks sooner than in the bigger water. So the red drum will be there, feeding on the bait. No water is too shallow to hold them. If you see bait working, the redfish will be close by, even in water that barely covers their backs. I look for them in water that is between 18 inches and 6 feet deep.”

Stay focused

The hardest part of a fishing trip can be staying focused. With the barometric pressure changes and temperature changes occurring on a frequent basis in March, the fish may bite one day – or one hour – then shut down the next.

“An approaching weather front can set them to biting like crazy,” he said. “Then, after it hits, they get lockjaw. Going from hero to zero in just a few minutes is just the way of March fishing. You have to get used to it if you want to go after redfish.”

Capt. Patrick Kelly (Boogie Man Fishing Charters, 843-962-3505), having boogied out of Little River, SC to get away from crowds, is now fishing out of St. Helena Island, SC. He targets redfish around Beaufort, at Trenchards Inlet and in Port Royal Sound.

“In March, I target structure to catch redfish,” Kelly said. “There is a lot of structure around the Sea Islands that holds redfish. I fish the tree laydowns, docks and bulkheads along the banks of the creeks and oyster beds out on the flats.”

Kelly uses a trolling motor to ease along in his 24-foot Pathfinder, casting to visible structure. His favorite lure is a Berkley Gulp Jerk Shad on a 3/8-ounce jighead. He also fishes with live shrimp and mud minnows on bottom rigs and float rigs.

“I like live shrimp fished on float rigs,” he said. “Live shrimp are easy baits to acquire because you can buy them at tackle shops. I use cut shrimp if live shrimp are not available. Mud minnows are easy to catch in the creeks. I use a minnow trap baited with shrimp heads set in the grass at low tide. It only takes a few minutes to catch a supply of mud minnows for a day’s fishing.”

Play the tides

The most difficult part of catching redfish is learning where to fish during different stages of the tide. For a newcomer, learning the area and the tides is a daunting task.

“You should begin fishing on low tide and start casting to structure you can see,” he said. “That way, you won’t get your boat stuck on a bar where you can’t get it off. The rising tide will float the boat free.”

He uses a spinning rod to cast a float rig up-current from an oyster bed or tree and allows it to float past. The float keeps the baited hook above the oysters to prevent snagging and provides a visual way of preventing line and leader tangles in shoreline cover. In deeper channels, he drops his baits on a bottom rig.

 “I look for structure in 6 to 10 feet of water,” he said. “If you can’t see it, you can locate structure with a depthfinder. I try to find good-looking spots on low tide and return to fish them on higher tide stages.”

The best time to fish is during a light wind, but the fish may also bite in windy conditions. When the weather is windy, he uses the shoreline to block the wind or heads up one of the creeks where the water is calm. The worst time to fish is during very high astronomical tides.

“When the tide is so high that it covers the grass, the redfish will follow the bait into the grass to feed,” he said. “That makes finding them more difficult than when you are fishing structure. Sight fishing the grass beds is more like hunting for fish than it is actually fishing, and it requires poling the boat or wading. March is a windy month, and wind makes it hard to see fish when they are in the grass.” 

Mud minnows in March

When the water is as cold as it can be in March, red drum can be finicky about what they will bite. When the weather is windy, it can be difficult to make an accurate cast to present a lure near enough to fish-holding structure without inviting a snagged line or hook.

Both problems can be solved by using live baits on float rigs or bottom rigs. Shrimp, whether dead or alive, are go-to baits that are relished by redfish. But live shrimp may be hard to find or buy, and fresh, store-bought shrimp to use as bait may not actually be fresh enough for the best bite opportunities.

The answer for some anglers is using a minnow trap to catch mud minnows to use as bait. Red drum love them and they are easy to catch.

Capt. Patrick Kelly uses a minnow trap set in a grass bed at the warmer water areas in upper ends of creeks. He uses the heads cut off or pinched off of bait shrimp for baiting his mud minnow traps.

Mud minnows can be kept alive in a live well or bait bucket because they are extremely hardy, especially in the colder temperatures of March.