A SPECIAL REPORT by Captain John Kumiski ©2012
A Guide's Guide to Redfish Flies
In general, guides have simple needs for their flies. They have to hold together. They have to not twist the line while casting. They have to be fairly castable. And most importantly, they have to catch fish.
Redfish, the most popular fly rod target in southeastern saltwater, have simple needs for their foods. More than 90 percent of a redfish’s dietary needs are met by shrimp, crabs, and small fish. The contents of our fly boxes should reflect this.
Most of us prefer to sight fish for redfish whenever possible. For sight fishing, a fly which imitates one of the three major prey items is preferred. The imitation need not be terribly realistic. Redfish generally aren’t fussy. A suggestive tie will usually suffice.
The mouth of a redfish is below its snout and points down. Biologists call this mouth placement inferior. Redfish often prefer feeding down, since they’re best designed for it. Their tailing activity is a perfect example of this. Weighted flies that sink with expedience are an absolute necessity.
Weighted flies should be only weighted, though, and not anchored. I most frequently use 1/100th and 1/50th ounce lead dumbbells, and only carry a few flies heavier than that. Only in special situations will you need very heavily weighted flies.
Redfish often feed in such shallow water that their backs are exposed to the atmosphere. Louisiana anglers call these fish “crawlers,” a delightfully colorful and descriptive name. When the fish use such shallow water they are quite spooky. The splash of a weighted fly hitting the water will often blow them out. For such shallow water fish you need to carry unweighted flies that kiss the water instead of coming down with a plop.
Redfish will occasionally chase baitfish up on the surface, much the way jack crevalle will do. These fish are extremely aggressive and will take almost any kind of fly. When they do this a floating pattern like a popper or Crease Fly is more entertaining than using a sinking fly.
The prey items of redfish tend not to have bright, garish colors. Most redfish flies should be dressed somewhat subtly because of this.
However, you can’t always sightfish. Clouds, winds, deep or dirty water or some combination of these factors not infrequently make sight fishing impossible. Then you need attractor patterns. Attractor flies use bright colors, lots of flash, vibration, and/or sound to attract fish that can’t be seen to them. A popper makes an excellent attractor pattern. So does a spoon fly. We’ll look at a few more below.
Clouser Minnows and spoon flies may be the two most popular redfish flies out there. However, the editor of this fine publication made the point very clearly- no Clouser Minnows in this piece. If you’re reading this magazine you don’t need me to tell you what a Clouser Minnow is anyway.
Redfish frequently feed around oysters, or Spartina grass or other vegetation. Because of this, redfish flies require weed guards more often than not. My current favorite is a double mono prong. This is easy to tie in after the rest of the fly is tied, if you leave a few millimeters extra space at the head to allow for it.
Most of the redfish we catch range in size from three to ten pounds. Most of what they eat is fairly small, well imitated by flies tied on hook sizes 4, 2, and 1.
So, having looked in a general way at what the design parameters of redfish flies should be, let’s take a look at what a selection of redfish guides from North Carolina to Texas have to say about their favorite redfish flies.
Capt. Seth Vernon of Wilmington, NC says, "We use Crease Flies for the topwater bite. We have a local version. We strip it short and erratic, so it plunges and spits. We use Umpqua's Rattle Mullet, and Weber's Rattle Shrimp in gold and brown, those work very well. The Flexo Crab and the Velcro Crab are wonderful crab patterns. Murdoch's Wiggler is a new fly from Umpqua that likewise works very well. Borski ties some wonderful patterns. The Bonefish Slider works great. I like his Chernobyl Redfish fly, too. Bunny fur works beautifully. The Spoon Minnow from Kreel Tackle is a bad fly, it works very well. That's a fist full of the flies that we use.”
Capt. Tuck Scott, out of Bay Street Outfitters in Beaufort, SC says, "My favorite flies include the Dupre Spoonfly for the tailers because it's so very weedless. And of course the fish eat the daylights out of it. Any kind of Electric Chicken fly works well, too. [Electric Chicken is a chartreuse over hot pink color combination. -JK] Bunny flies with weedguards work real well for fish in any circumstance. A brown Clouser Minnow works as well as anything else, and crab patterns such as the Merkin are always good to carry. I like my Merkins to be very dark- black, dark purple, or dark brown. There are a lot of other flies that will work. You need something that will get down when you're not in the grass, or something that's good and weedless and will sink moderately fast for tailers. These fish are not very picky.”
Where I fish in the Indian River system, my favorite flies are mostly simple, five minute ties. For blind casting I like a gurgler, a Dupre Spoonfly, or a Rattle Rouser. For sight fishing I have a handful of different flies I use, including the Mosquito Lagoon Special, the Bunny Booger, the Seaducer, the Sili Shrimp, and the Redfish Bite. Most are tied with natural materials, and most are in some earth tone color- brown, tan, gray, green, black, grizzly. I like bunny strips, grizzly hackle, bucktail, and squirrel tail. I do use synthetic minnow imitations and bendbacks. They come down very gently and don't spook the fish with a PLOP like a Clouser Minnow can. The fish eat shrimp, crabs, and small fish, and I like flies that can suggest any of these. If you fish here you'd better have flies with weedguards because the manatee grass catches on everything.
Capt. Rick DePaiva fishes the turtle grass flats in Florida's Pine Island Sound, says, "The size 2 estaz bendback fly with squirrel tail for the wing, with some flash, with bead chain eyes and a weedguard, is my favorite fly for these fish. My number two fly is a crab pattern- a Fuzzy Crab, a Merkin, or one of Puglisi's crab patterns, also a size two. Again, it has to have a weedguard. The third one would be the Cousin Itt, size 2, with Palmered Arctic fox, flashy tail, and a weedguard, in white or purple. Finally, foam gurglers work well sometimes and they're easy to cast."
Capt. Dan Kolenich mostly blind fishes deep water in Mobile Bay, Alabama. He says, "As far as flies go I use Kirk's Rattle Rouser. I like it a lot because of the noise it makes. I make them both unweighted and weighted. I like a gold body with brown bucktail and flash for the wing. I use a lot of Clouser Minnows, especially chartreuse, yellow, or gray and white. I like to put peacock herl on the backs of all my Clouser Minnows. In shallow water I like grizzly saddle hackle eelworm flies like bass fishermen use. The body is red chenille and has a hackle feather Palmered around it. I put bead chain eyes on the flies to make the hook point ride up. I like a yellow body, too. I like to put some red in all my flies."
Capt. Mark Brockhoeft (504.392.7146) fishes the Barataria Estuary south of New Orleans. He says, "My favorite flies include wobble flies. The redfish really like them. I like poppers. The Chernoble Crab is great. I like bendbacks for crawlers because they land softly. You can put the fly right on the fish without spooking them. But day in and day out we catch more fish on spoon flies than any other fly. If they're not aggressive enough to hit the spoon then I'll try something that you have to fish more slowly.
"If I see the fish chasing shrimp across the surface, or striking shad or especially mullet up on top, than I know they will take a popping bug. I would rather use a popper than anything other type of fly. I like the excitement of the topwater action. A nine or ten pound redfish can make a hell of an explosion in a foot and a half of water."
Capt. Bryan Carter (504.329.5198), who fishes for big reds from Port Sulphur to Venice, Louisiana, says, "I like crab flies. I fish a lot of crabs. I especially like the EP crabs. I like poppers, too, and fish them a lot. Clouser minnow-type flies work. Any type of critter-type fly works. Spoonflies work, but I'm not a big fan. If the grass gets too thick to use anything else then I will use a spoon, but I just don't like to use them. They're not really a fly.
"I like to use poppers when the fish are feeding on shrimp, when the shrimp first push into or push out of the marsh. Then the fish feed very aggressively and they just slam a popper. They hit them better than anything else. We've had some awesome, 30 fish days on poppers then. They key is, what are they feeding on? If they're feeding on shrimp, a popper is the way to go. You can tell. You'll see then busting bait, or they are just stupid on the fly. Crawlers will take a popper in a heartbeat."
Capt. Scott Sommerlatte fishes the uppermost Laguna Madre in Texas, says, "My single favorite redfish fly is Borski's Bonefish Slider because it mimics a wide variety of forage that the fish feed on. Backcountry redfish here eat more shrimp than anything, closely followed by crabs. When they do eat small fish it's usually killifish or pinfish, but they prefer to eat shrimp. A Bonefish Slider has the same size and profile as most of the shrimp here.
"You can tie this fly in a variety of ways so that you can fish it from six inches of water to two feet of water. I like to tie a little bit of chartreuse into my sliders, since most of our shrimp have some green in their tail. It's a very versatile fly.
"My secondary flies include Clouser Minnows and Kwans. I always carry a spoonfly for emergencies, but I don't like them. Occasionally I use little poppers, but most fishermen miss a lot of strikes. The fish will hit them, though. If I had to carry only three flies it would be the Bonefish Slider, the Clouser Minnow, and the spoonfly. All of my flies are tied with weedguards."
Capt. Terry Neal fishes the Laguna Madre at Port Mansfield. Terry says, "I like small shrimp patterns, size 4 or even 6. My son T.J. makes some deerhair shrimp that sink real slow, they work really well. The fish eat shrimp all the time. I've never gotten into using Clouser Minnows very much. I fish Seaducers, I have for a long time. But the killer pattern is that little spoonfly that TJ makes. It can imitate piggy perch, or a crab, it really imitates a couple different kinds of their forage and it works well."
Capt. Eric Glass fishes the southernmost Laguna Madre at South Padre Island in Texas. Eric says, "I like a tan and white Clouser Minnow. It sinks fast and it's the best shrimp imitation on the planet. I like a generic yarn crab because it's almost completely weedless and the fish will almost always eat it if you put it in the right place and move it correctly. Those are the two flies I use 75 percent of the time. I use a modified Borski swimming shrimp with a tan tail, a root beer cactus chenille body, and Cree hackle Palmered through the cactus chenille. It's a buggy looking shrimp imitation that the fish really seem to like. We use poppers once in a great while in mid- or late summer when the grass is thick. It's hard to get the tailing fish to see your fly in thick grass and they can hear that popper. It gets their attention. That's the only time I use them."
So, you now know that a small selection of flies will work for reds no matter where you fish for them. You need imitators and attractors in sizes 6 through 1. The imitators should imitate shrimp, crabs, and small fish. Some should be unweighted, others need to sink. Natural materials work, but so do synthetics.
A redfish is a simple beast. Keep it simple, keep it fun, and you’ll have success with any of the flies detailed here.
Copyright © John A. Kumiski 2012. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute this work in any manner or medium without written permission from the author, John A. Kumiski, 284 Clearview Road, Chuluota, FL 32766 (407) 977-5207, spottedtail@spottedtail.com.
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