The redfish bite continues to be the main attraction for bay and flats anglers looking for fast paced action.

Redfish bayThe topwater bite has been very productive just about all day long, but mid-day sight fishing with jigs is a good way to watch a few eat. If you are fishing them in the skinny water on the flats, be sure to keep noise to a minimum – fish can be quite skittish when they’re up in the shallows. Reds that are in slightly deeper water are usually far more relaxed and less stealth is required. Jigs and live baits are the easiest ways to get hooked up fishing for them when they are sitting on drop offs or in deep potholes.

Speckled trout are still biting fairly well over grass in 2-5 feet of water. Trout are curious fish and will often investigate a loud lure and strike at it once or twice even if they have no intention of eating it. If you understand and can distinguish between the types of strikes you are getting, then you can adjust your lure/presentation and entice the fish to actually attempt to eat what you’re cooking.

Day in and day out, it’s hard to beat a shrimp pattern for catching trout. On the other hand, there are a bunch of pilchards and menhaden in the bays right now and live chumming the flats is a great way to get them fired up.

In the deeper parts of the bay with swift current, the bull redfish have been plentiful and aggressive. The bridges and the pass are consistently good spots for the bulls but there are also several other structures in 15-30 feet of water that hold big schools of large over-slot reds. I generally like to target them with the D.O.A. jerk-baits on ¼ ounce jig-heads, but the fish will attack a variety of lures, including rattle baits and hair and feather jigs. A key to getting more bites is to making sure you present the lure in the way that their food would come to them, which means throwing your lure up current and letting it drift back with the current to the fish.

Good luck!