“The Lure of Redfish”
By Terry Lacoss
Cold northeast winds, muddy water conditions and the wrong tide greeted my backcountry charter Pete Douma of Wycoff, New Jersey this past Sunday. Also keep in mind that this same cold front had staked out Northeast Florida for the past week, adding to today’s fishing challenge.
“Terry I have never caught a redfish,” Pete said, “I have tried a couple of times, but the conditions were not right. I have caught a variety of saltwater species on the fly including my favorite false albacore, but my dream is catching a redfish on the fly”!
The fishing conditions were so bad that for a second I thought abought canceling my charter, but seeing the anticipation in my client’s face, there was no way I could postpone his quest for catching his first redfish on the fly.
Forty-five minutes and further up the Nassau River Peter was soon casting his nine-weight fly rod and “Clouser” fly pattern to the shallow edges of a massive spartina marsh. Pete’s fly reel was also filled with an intermediate fly line that paired up perfectly to the slow in-coming tide, allowing Pete’s fly to sink slowly and run even with the shoreline with little drag on the fly. Right away I confirmed that Pete had vast experience in saltwater fly casting, placing his saltwater fly within inches of the marsh edge. Having a seasoned fly caster on board is always a great inspiration when guiding fly fishermen to a variety of saltwater game fish.
Also take into consideration that when fishing conditions are tough, a slow sinking and swimming minnow type fly maybe one of the best angling tactics following and during a massive cold front. Also tied to the business end of Pete’s twenty-pound tippet was a brown and gold feathered/weighted “Clouser Minnow” fly. By far one of my favorite redfish flies. The popular crab patterns are a close second, followed by shrimp patterns.
I did notice that Pete was stripping his redfish fly a little too fast, especially when his fly entered the water and close to redfish cover.
“Allow you fly to sink a foot or so when it enters the water,” I instructed Pete. “Then slow down your retrieve slightly as we are in a cold front situation and everything slows down, including the feeding habits of redfish”.
At that same moment we navigated to a section of the marsh edge where a few small feeder creeks entered the main creek that also harbored several small cuts and points in the marsh edges. A perfect cast, followed by allowing the fly to sink slowly produced a solid strike and a deeply bent seven-foot fly rod. A spotted sea trout soon came thrashing to the surface and was netted. This was not our targeted game fish, but it had also broken the ice when fishing conditions were far from ideal.
A few casts later a second and stronger game fish inhaled Pete’s saltwater fly. Following a solid hookset, Pete’s fly rod fish ran deep along the shallow edges of tidal creek. With great anticipation Pete watched his business end of his fly line hoping that his hooked game fish would be his first redfish. Seconds later a well spotted redfish came and rolled on the surface to Pete’s approval.
After a short but powerful fight, I slipped the net under Pete’s very first redfish!
During the rest of the morning Pete caught and released four more redfish on the fly along with five sea trout making our decision to fly fish in narrow tidal creeks a complete success.
I’ll have to say that the best action came during the first portion of the in-coming tide. As the tide began to flood, the action definitely slowed and with good reasoning. As tides flood the creek marshes, forage foods that once had to migrate from the marsh to the edges of the creek and marsh, were now migrating back into the flooding marsh. With the lack of forage foods, creek redfish either stage in the deeper portions of the tidal creeks, or migrate up narrow feeder creeks continuing to feed on shrimp, crabs, fiddler crags and shell fish.
Pete Douma’s son Peter Douma, is a saltwater light- tackle and fly guide fishing out of Montauk, New York. I expect Pete will be once again chasing redfish on the fly, now the Southeast’s favorite game fish!
