tight lines: lowcountry fishing
Spot those tails
By Matt Winter
Matt Winter
Tideline
You’ve earned this moment.
After a long day at work, you hussled home, got your boat to the ramp, dropped it in and raced the rising tide to your favorite redfish flat off the Intracoastal Waterway. You poled the boat up into the marsh grass, fighting the wind until you reached firm, sandy mud near a small island.
You grabbed a rod, tucked an extra gold spoon in your pocket and hopped out of the boat. Carefully, you stalked through the ankle-deep water and dense spartina. Then you waited, hardly moving, as the tide continued to flood the marsh.
And now you spot it. The first spot-tail bass cruises up out of the feeder creek onto the flooding flat, leaving a wake like a slow but steady torpedo. You want to rush into position and launch a spoon ahead of him, but you don’t. You wait.
Finally, as the sun begins to set and the water rises shin-deep, you get what you came for. As if on cue, the half-dozen bass you didn’t see moving onto the flat suddenly go vertical, sticking their tails out of the water as they nose down into the mud and gobble fiddler crabs.
That’s Lowcountry flats fishing at its best, and it’s a scene that plays out over and over for a lucky few. Capt. Ben Floyd’s one of them. The McClellanville native and charter captain, who has been chasing spot-tails around the flats for more than 15 years, shared some of his secrets at a recent seminar at the Charleston Angler in West Ashley.
Finding a flat
The ideal flat for tailing spot-tails is typically found off larger bodies of water such as the Intracoastal Waterway. There are many such flats behind Isle of Palms and further north along the waterway.
Prime flats usually surround a small island, or hummock. Tall spartina grass lines the outer rim of these flats and the edges of feeder creeks. The pluff mud here is typically too soft for wading. But the interior portion of the flat usually features a somewhat harder bottom, often a mix of mud and sand.
Here you’ll find dense fields of shorter spartina grass. When the tide rises, these areas become the goto spot for stalking redfish.
“If it’s deeper than your knee, it’s probably too deep,” Floyd advised.
Anglers with flats boats usually pole their vessels past the soft mud and up into the interior portions of these flats. Some then get out and wade. Floyd prefers this stalking method.
“I don’t hunt, but I feel more like I’m hunting when I’m on foot,” he said. “It’s more fun for me that way.”
The cedar tree rule
With so many small islands to choose from, how does Floyd narrow it down? Simple. He looks for cedar trees. Even one small tree on an island is enough.
“Cedar trees mean good bottom for fiddler crabs and small blue crabs, and that means it’ll have spot-tails,” he said. “If it’s got a tree, it holds more fish.”
When to go
Floyd looks for 6-foot or better high tides, preferably in the late afternoons. He likes to beat the fish to the flats, often wading to dry land long before the rising water actually floods the flat.
Spot-tails tend to feed all the way until high tide, then the action often slows, he said. The fish often will start feeding again as the tide begins to fall and the fish work their way back off the flat and into feeder creeks. Savvy anglers can “get them on the way out,” he said.
Be stealthy
“Any wave action you create up on the flats will shut them down,” Floyd said. Move as little as possible while on a boat and be stealthy while wading through the grass. If you do spook fish, just stop and wait. “Give that fish four or five minutes, and he’ll stick his tail back up.”
Respect the flat
Don’t EVER run your motor while up on a flat. Floyd’s seen tell-tale ruts left in otherwise pristine flats, obviously left by propellers as lazy anglers motored back out. These “scars” in the marsh can take years to heal, Floyd said.
“If you push your boat all the way up in that flat, be prepared to push it ALL the way back out.”
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