One of the biggest mistakes anglers chasing slot redfish in the southern Chesapeake make is hanging up their rods in the winter. While it can be a bit tougher to locate them in colder weather, once you find them it can lead to the best fishing of the year. Redfish often group up into large schools in the cold and if you approach them correctly you can stay on them for just about as long as you’d like. If you want to fill a stringer with spot tails while lesser anglers sit at home waiting for summer to arrive, this window of opportunity is open.
When to Target Redfish in the Cold
You can catch redfish on most days, but it’s generally pretty tough until you hit a warming trend. Try to time your trips with when there have been two or three days in a row of sunny weather, ideally above 50 degrees. Warming trends like this should happen multiple times in the coming months and will bring the fish into shallower water that’s warming at a faster rate than deeper areas in the immediate vicinity.
Before planning a trip, look for areas that will receive the most sun throughout the day, ideally in spots with a muddy bottom or old grass flats from last summer. These areas are darker in color than sandy bottoms and will absorb more sunlight, heating up faster. Generally speaking, the best bite will be in the afternoon after these shallows have had time to warm up. An outgoing tide will usually hold the best bite as well; incoming tides bring in cooler water from deeper areas while outgoing tides can create natural warm water discharges from shallow coves that have heated up in the sun.
On cooler days or when there’s less direct sunlight, focus your efforts on ledges and structure in the six- to 12-foot range near your shallow water spots. Schools of reds will usually hang out in deeper water outside but close to the areas that warm up the fastest.
Finding Chesapeake Redfish in Winter
Finding the fish is generally the hardest part of fishing for reds in the cold weather months. Just how far up Chesapeake Bay redfish will range at any given time depends entirely on the severity of the winter, how quickly it warms up as spring hits, and weather conditions in general. That said, over the past five years they’ve shown up in our fishing reports throughout the Way South Zone on both the Western and Eastern Shore. That ranges up to around Mobjack on the west side, and Hungars Creek on the east side. While the fish are grouped up in large schools, they often aren’t nearly as aggressive as they are during summer and fall and don’t display the visual indicators that many anglers use to find them, like exploding on baitfish or tailing. On top of that, it’s much less common to run into singles or smaller schools scattered about. There’s a lot of searching involved, and I’ve had many winter days where I’ve gone hours without seeing a fish. But once you find them, there’s usually so many it more than makes up for all that searching.
While it’s not absolutely necessary, side-scan is a huge help in the winter since the schools are few and far between. It also makes it pretty dang easy to follow a school of fish around and catch them one after the next. Focus your efforts on open areas that aren’t shaded by tall marsh grasses or trees. Start looking at shallows with as little as two feet of water, ideally over mud flats at the mouths of coves. Scan along the area, getting progressively deeper until you locate a school. The sweet spot on the warmer days is usually in the two- to four-foot range. Don’t stop moving until you find the fish. If you feel that brain-itching urge to get a bait in the water no matter what, trolling a paddle tail is a great way to have a chance of hooking up while you search—but don’t stop and start casting unless you see fish on the electronics or visually. Blind casting flats can be an effective method in the summer and fall when the fish are more spread out, but until it warms up the fish are usually grouped so tightly it ends up being a waste of time.
If you get to the ramp and realize the weatherman lied like usual and it’s colder than you'd like or cloudy, it’s time to shift to those deeper ledges but focus on areas near prime shallow water spots. The fish are cold, and want to expend as little energy as possible, so they usually won’t go very far from where they were. Oyster beds, docks, and sharp ledges or holes are prime areas to search. If you’re inside a marsh system, creek mouths and sharp bends will often create holes which redfish love to group up in when it's cold. If you don’t have electronics, focus on areas like this where you can “read the marsh” and know where there should be deeper water. Slow-trolling baits and bouncing them off the bottom through holes is my favorite way to locate redfish in the winter without electronics.
Catching Reds in the Cold
Like many other fish, redfish prefer it low and slow in the winter. I’ve had the most success throwing three-inch, scented soft plastics on 1/16 to 1/8 ounce jig heads.
Now let’s say you’re slow-trolling paddle tails while keeping an eye on the side-scan, searching for a school. When those gobs of Chesapeake gold pop up 60’ to your left and your heart begins to pound out of your chest, don’t rush. They’ll generally be moving around so slowly they won’t go anywhere unless you spook them. Cast at the edge of the school, and slowly pop the lure off the bottom back to you. If you can manage to land it near the edge and have a few fish follow it off the school before striking, you have a much better chance of not spooking the whole group when you hook up.
If you do spook them, try to pay attention to which direction they move off because they generally don't go very far and you can get right back on them. If you’re shallow enough, you may be able to follow the mud clouds they make as they swim. If you’re too deep to tell which direction they went, spiral out from where you saw them in bigger and bigger circles. They’ll usually pop back up on the side-scan within a few hundred feet.
Once you find your first school, pay attention to what depth they were in and focus on that range. If the fish are shallow in the winter, there's usually a certain depth that's comfortable for them that most of the schools will be in. As the tide goes out, the fish will usually move with it, staying at that preferred depth.
Did you hang up those rods months ago? That was a mistake—dust them off asap and start watching for those warming trends.
-By David Rudow - You can follow David at reelinwithrudow on instagram or on Facebook, and see his channel on YouTube.