Fly Rod Redfish

I went fishing this morning with the intention of catching some more redfish on the fly rod. I fished the marsh figuring that with the low tide bottoming out around first light the redfish would be stacked up in the "deeper" areas. When I say "deeper" I mean that in relative terms. I was fishing water that was at most 1' deep, while the surrounding areas had only a few inches of water.

The itinerary for the morning was to cover water and look for active fish. I wanted to increase my odds of catching fish on the fly rod, so didn’t want to waste time trying to get inactive fish bite. I decided only to stop and cast if I saw tails, backs, or schools of redfish. I found only one school in the couple of hours I fished this morning but I did see quite a few “submarines” (see video).

With the low tides this morning I saw several of these "submarines" crusing the shorelines looking for food...


In the video below I saw backing redfish deep in the grass and since I had not caught a fish up till this point I decided to use the baitcaster and soft plastic combo to try to entice it to eat. Well, I unequivocally failed from all standpoints. I had a hard time trying to get my lure out in front of this fish because most of the time it was far back in the spartina grass. I was using an open hook 1/8oz jighead and every time I tried getting my lure close I got caught up in the grass. I should have switch to a screwlock weedless jighead but became overly excited when I saw this fish, and I was being stubborn.

The few times the fish did come out into an open pocket my lure was hung the grass, so I had to sit there and wait until the fish swam past where my lure was stuck in the grass before I ripped it out. In the video you can also see when I got my lure entangled in the grass so bad that I had to break the line to prevent from spooking this fish. After breaking off, this fish started swimming straight at me. I had no time to tie on a new lure and the only other rod I had with me was my fly rod, so I gave it a shot. The fish spook slightly off the shoreline and surfaced within feet of my kayak. I put two casts in front of the fish before it decided that it didn’t like what I was offering and spooked off for good.

Comedy of Errors


About ten yards down the shoreline I spotted another fish swimming straight at me. With only the fly rod rigged, I decided to give it another shot. I put the fly right on the fish’s nose and he ate it. My biggest redfish on the fly rod to date, a 24” 4.5lb fish.





I was using an East Cut Grass Shrimp in white (http://www.eastcut.com/grassShrimp.php). I love this fly because it imitates a shrimp beautifully. The main food source redfish forage on in a majority of the marshes I fish in is small-sized shrimp. It also sinks slowly, which makes it a great lure for fishing very shallow in the marsh. I like to throw white-colored baits when sight fishing, but sometimes in our dirty water around Galveston bright colors like chartreuse work well.

It also simple and very easy to tie. When I get a chance in the next few days, I’m going to pull out the vise and tie a bunch of them in various colors. I’ll videotape it and post it online, so everyone can see how easy it is to tie. I’m an extremely novice fly-fisherman and fly-tyer, so if I can tie it anybody can.