Do the reds do this every year?

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Prof. Salt
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Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Prof. Salt »

For three weeks now I haven't seen redfish along shorelines at all. They roam open water in groups, or lay on the bottom until I run directly over them, leaving in a puff of mud as they swim away. I'm still managing to catch good fish, but it's striking how their behavior suddenly changed away from the shorelines. Maybe they do this every year but I never noticed because I've already switched to hunting by this time... but it has been an obvious shift in their behavior on the flats since I'm late shifting to a treestand.

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Ron Mc
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Ron Mc »

my thought is rising tides bring them to the shores, and falling tides send them toward holes.

Josh once posted NOAA annual tide levels graphic for Corpus on the forum, but it looks like the photo link has gone now.
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Prof. Salt »

Thanks Ron. I've been using this one that shows predicted and actual tides, so at least I know when the water is blown out and I can't paddle into the areas that I usually fish.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/stati ... id=8775244
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Ron Mc »

Hi Glenn,
NOAA is a pretty good source, and with a little time on the water you can calibrate your reference station to you favorite fishing holes.

What I was thinking about was the seasonal tide changes, peaking in spring and fall, and waning in summer and winter.
The plot I wanted to find was mean highs and mean lows month-by-month for the year.
There may be a factor there in decreasing MWL as we move into December that affects where redfish choose to go.
I'll ask Josh to pony in....
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by karstopo »

Yea, I’m still working on what the redfish are doing when! I do know extra low water concentrates fish. When I lived at Surfside, the first week of October had redfish in packs, roving through this particular marsh in schools of 20 or 40, all of it seemed tied to season and water levels.

I’ve paddled over laid up fish. Redfish do have levels of “spook” in my experience. So can be caught even if they know something isn’t quite right. One of the best redfish I caught was a spooked fish that was swimming away from the kayak, but yet still sucked in a something, can’t remember what fly exactly.

I think winter is the easiest time to get juvenile, a.k.a. slot redfish. Not so much bait around, low water pretty prevalent, fish got to eat regardless of the season, clear water. Advantage to the fishermen. Fall gets the big schools roving around shorelines and if you are on those, that’s wide open lay up type of stuff.
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by SWFinatic »

Did you have any tidal movement? A slack tide can cause that. I've been in the marsh a few times in the past month or so and have noticed reds sleeping or not roaming once and there was no tidal movement. Soon as the tide began falling it was game on. High pressure can too but I don't believe we've had a lot of high pressure in the past few weeks. Sudden drop in water temps could also be a factor. We've had a couple of fronts that have dropped the water almost 10 degrees in 24 hours each time.

NOAA is a solid source for tides (I'm pretty sure all the other tide charts use NOAA data) and that's what I use too but even they are not 100% accurate. Last week I was with a friend in his boat and we were in the Lydia Ann and the tide was ripping out yet NOAA said low tide for the buoy at the jetties was 2 hours prior.
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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Neumie »

Here's a graph that shows the seasonal change in tide levels per month. Obviously moon phase and wind speed/direction have a huge impact on the day to day level, but it's neat to see the seasonal levels.

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Re: Do the reds do this every year?

Post by Ron Mc »

Thanks Josh
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