After pretty reliable fishing for most of the summer, the tailing has dwindled significantly down here in Savannah. I haven’t been seeing the larger fish on the flats over the last 6 weeks either. There have been more 20-22 inch fish with a bunch of rat reds thrown in. Yesterday, with perfect conditions, I saw only a half dozen tailers and only one large fish digging and feeding aggressively.
A tactic that has been producing, however, is to set up in the likely places that the reds will drop of the flat as the water falls. I have been getting 6-8 good shots at cruising fish trying to grab one more snack as they leave the flat. Yesterday, it paid off with 2 nice fish 22-24 inches each.
I am not sure why the digger has dropped off, but there has been a bumper crop of shrimp in the creeks and river that I am sure the reds are gorging themselves on.
Are the fish still digging hard on your favorite flats?
They sure weren’t today. but then again, the water was no where near as high as predicted either. Still thought I’d have seen more though. Pretty disappointing
The fish are keyed in on the shrimp. It is the easiest source of food right now. Keep in mind that redfish will change locations throughout the cycles of their lives. Your larger fish may have started to intermingle with the bulls coming inshore now. Those fish will never return to your flats. Log when your spot produced and it should do it again next year with a fresh supply of hungry fish. They will be looking for the food source that was/is on your flat. I do have some places that vary year to year but a general rule of thumb is productive grounds provide fairly predictable fish patterns.
I agree that the fish sure are keyed on the shrimp right now. From 9-16 of October I caught 7 fish, broke off an additional 2 and had one come unbuttoned, all on a shrimp pattern I tie. One of the ones I broke off and the one that came unbuttoned were fish that I had to flip the fly to because they were so close (only about 6 inches of fly line out) and so I was unable to strip set and had to set with the rod.
Some of the fish I caught during that time were tailing…but not very aggressively. Most of the fish were cruising, and if you could spot them and get a shrimp pattern in front of them they would hit it aggressively.
