Fly and Light Tackle Adventures: Topsail, Bald Head, Carolina Beach, and Southport

  With a perfect Full Moon tailing tide and a brief weather window before the blow started, Darin and I hit a favorite spot for Tailing Redfish near Southport.  With a recipe that includes pre-frontal weather conditions, a tide cresting right at Moon Rise, and hundreds of protein laden crabs, we knew the Reds would be dining. After running a short distance up a marsh gut that feeds the Spartina flat, we saw backing/tailing fish in all directions. There were 3-4 year class fish tailing hard at the terminus of a gut that feeds the South end of the flat, 2-3 year olds playing to our West, and about a dozen nearly overslot fish standing on their heads just to our East. Darin poled softly to the fish at our 12 o' clock, as I stripped fly line in preparation for what should have been the easiest cast to make, a quartering downwind shot about 30 feet away, I let it happen... that endorphin rush that turns normally cool hands into those of a 5 year old with his first Snoopie rod! After 2 straight tailing loops that blew out both fish I was gunning for, Darin spotted a 25" Red swimming directly at us, mouth gaping, as he kept track and ranged him for me, I picked up the spinning rod and lofted a small fluke pinned to an in-line spinner about 5 feet in front of and to the left of the Red's path. As the bait splashed down, he lazily swam over, eyed the offering and tipped to eat. As I came tight, he  rocketted of into the old growth grass and headed  for the creek channel, seeing the 10lb running line leaving the reel at a dizzying pace, and fearing he would make the channel before I could turn him, I jumped from the boat and pursued on foot. Minutes later a fat 7lb. 25" fish came  to hand. With bigger tails waving to our East, Darin snapped a couple quick pics and the hunt resumed. As the 5 foot plus tide flooded the maze of interconnecting marsh pans, I begin to question just what brings these fish from there usual haunts like open mud flats and submerged oyster bars to what seems to be an alien landscape for a fish. The answer I suppose is crabs, crabs, and more crabs. For a species to grow upwards of three feet in as little as three and a half years, there is but one necessity, and that's copious amounts of easy to obtain protein, and it doesn't come much easier than in a creature who's mobility is limited by a stiff exoskeleton and all those tiny oddly jointed legs. Huge colonies of Fddler crabs, Calico crabs, and to a lesser extent, juvenile Blue Crabs seek refuge on these marsh flats that typically only flood on evening moon tides. As the periodic high evening tides begin to flood the flats deep within the marshe's interior, the crustaceans and artropods have nowhere to escape, for fiddler and Calico crabs, safety comes from slipping inside their burrow and capping the entrance with a ball of previously digested detritus or mud. This would effectively conceal their presence from almost every other species of fish with the exception of a Redfish. From the powerful squared off tail that allows them to effortlessly propel themselves through mere inches of water, to the closely spaced eyes that offer them a true stereo visual picture inside a narrow cone of vision(perfect for finding the capped den burrows), to that classic underslung telescoping mouth  that upon closing, simultaneously triggers the lightning quick crusher that quickly pulverizes those hard exoskeletons meant to protect them from just such an attack, in a word, if your walking on six legs and two swim fins, this is your worst nightmare!  Tail, 1 o' clock, tracking toward us Darin called. It was only the sight of that huge copper  tail rimmed by a thin ribbon of blue waving like a flag a few inches above the glassy surface that brought me out of my contemplative state and back into fishing mode. As the tide began to ebb from the middle marsh, and the tails were replaced by numerous pods of finger mullet and shrimp popping and skittering their way back to deeper water, it was hard to imagine that only a small portion of the Redfish angling community ever gets a chance to witness this hidden fishery. The tailing fishery will fall off slightly this month as huge numbers of adult shrimp invade our inside waters, but the call of tides and tasty critters high in the grass will be too much for Scaienops Ocellatus and the Redfish will return with a vengeance for the Hunters Moon in October in the marshes around Topsail Island, Bald Head Island, Oak Island , and Southport before the crabs go into a period of inactivity for the Winter. See you on the water, and Tight Lines - Capt. Todd Streeter