Home Forums Fishing Saltwater Anyone fishing for Red Drum?

My first year on the water here (Crystal River-Ozello) so my experience is limited. Biggest challenge is navigating the shallows among the Mangroves.

Not fishing for them. But escaped about a month ago with my son to Matagorda Bay (sargent beach) to fish the surf.
Interesting trip, got a speeding ticket, forgot my rod holders, uneven marshy ocean floor, almost lost a shoe, bouht "fresh dead shrimp" and received a bag of frozen jumbo ones, etc. Was about to cut trip short and I borrowed a rod holder from guys fishing close by and caught some whiting and croakers on fishbites, then a nice hit and landed a 29" red on fishbites that I threw back, and then a 27" on a mullet (tail cutoff).

So it ended up being a nice trip that started badly.

Wish I was.

Haha. Know the feeling. Try Flamingo some time.

You can be running along in what you think is "deep enough" water far off the mangroves and run across a stump floating just under the surface.

Did that with my buddy in his Hewes. Put some nice "feature" on his hull.


PS- Congrats on moving to paradise. Know the area well.

Was out today running same track as always and scraped the oysters. I think they move from one week to the next! Hooke a nice Red but it got off.

Were you using bait or plastic?
We had pretty good luck with a Carolina Rig and live minnows.

Cut bait freelined for the larger reds, shrimp under cork for puppies. Plastics just gets me small trout and ladyfish.

Try tipping the plastics or rubber with shrimp or some joy juice.

try a mud minnow or a finger mullet on a # 1 or # 2 bait holder hook , hooked in the tail free lined

This year was the best year for reds I've seen in maybe my lifetime in VA. They were all over every saltwater and brackish tributary we have. Slammed em on the yak casting the olde 1/4 ounce jighead/ Berkley Gulp combo.

oxn939 , nice, down here you will catch 10 to 1 trout more than red fish with your rig . both eat fine

Excellent choices for bait. That works, too!

Thanks! Generally the same here- this year was just a boom year for reds. So much so that, many think, it was the reason for a relatively poor commercial blue crab harvest in the Chesapeake Bay.

ox, I did not know that reds went that far north. new they were in SC but not pass that . are they local or migrating fish ?

+1

If I have to rank them in taste best to worst I go flounder, redfish, trout, but none of it is bad.

The traditional wisdom is that they're here mostly for summer through fall, but I caught a 20 incher at the 2nd island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in Virginia Beach while fishing a striper tournament in February once. Guessing most migrate, but they're still killing them up here as we get below freezing temps

True. From mid Florida on down, I'd have to rank snook right below flounder for inshore species.

The best redfish I’ve ever eaten was grilled on the half shell. It so happened to have some cheddar jalapeño venison sausage cooking on the rack above it and the juices dripping down from the sausage made the redfish unique and delicious!