Cold Water Hot Fishing

It’s cold. Get over it.

Bundle up, back that boat down and head out on the water. Stay home and you’ll be warm — but you’ll also miss some of the best inshore fishing the Lowcountry has to offer.

How good? Sneak up to the right flat and you won’t believe your eyes. Hundreds of red drum pushing through gin-clear water just a few inches deep. A huge expanse of shallows, crisscrossed by the wakes of meandering torpedoes, each desperate for a meal.

Stay stealthy and you can pick at these schools for hours, playing catch-and-release until your arms hurt. You don’t need a lot of fancy tackle — just one or two types of lures will do. You don’t need a specialized boat. You just need to know what you’re doing.

Here’s where Capt. Tom Siwarski can help. Siwarski runs Carolina Aero Marine Adventures, and he’s got wintertime redfish down cold. And unlike many captains and cagey anglers, Siwarski doesn’t mind sharing his secrets … along with a few spots. During a recent seminar at The Charleston Angler’s Summerville location, Siwarski spared a few dozen anglers years of trial and error as he dished the dirt on sight-casting for wintertime reds.

The simple key to success, Siwarski says, is time on the water. You’ve just got to find the flats where redfish retreat in the colder months. Figure out where these homebody fish congregate, and you can play with them all winter long.

“There’s no fish that’s more predictable than a wintertime redfish,” Siwarski says. “When you find 100 fish on Monday, there are going to be 100 fish there on Friday, nine times out of 10.

“They find the flats they like, and they’re going to stay there. They’re content, they’re happy. They will be there, day after day after day at the same tide from now until the middle of March.

“If you put your time in, it’s the easiest way to catch redfish all year long — wintertime redfish.”

Action in the shallows

Siwarski holds a master’s degree in wildlife management and spends a lot of time studying redfish, not just catching them. Tidal stages, predation scenarios, weather patterns and variations in underwater habitats are all pieces of the angling puzzle.

Siwarski knows that as frost creeps over the Lowcountry’s salt marshes, all of these factors conspire to concentrate enormous numbers of spot-tailed bass in relatively small areas up in the shallows.

“If you find 30 or 40 fish together in the summer, that’s a big, big school,” Siwarski says. “They’re generally spread out, two or three here, six or eight there, single fish swimming all around. But once you get into the middle of January, you’ll have a hard time finding less than 50 fish together out there. And I’ve seen as many as 500 to 600 fish in one school.”

One of the biggest factors driving this behavior, he says, is the bottlenose dolphin.

“When we get to this time of year, our water temperatures are dropping, our mullet have left, the shrimp are moving out, menhaden have been gone for a couple of months — these fish (reds) are now the No. 1 food for dolphins. And it’s just gets worse and worse on them as it gets colder and colder.

“So that’s what they do. They know they’re going to get eaten by a dolphin, so they get shallow, try to make it as hard as they can for Flipper to eat them. ... They’re going for safety in numbers and safety in the shallows.”

Though many anglers may find it surprising that dolphin will hunt down a redfish 20 inches or longer, it does happen. And it’s a spectacular sight.

“It is the coolest thing to see in the world,” Siwarski admits, “until you’re a fishing guide trying to make money catching redfish.

“I have poled down a bank 400 yards to get in the perfect position, was just getting ready to cast and here comes Flipper. He absolutely destroys a school, eats six redfish and swims away smiling.

“You will see it, and it will be cool the first time you see it, but after that, it will really start to get on your nerves.”

Aside from safety from dolphins, reds also school up in the shallows looking for warmth. That’s why Siwarski loves to fish the flats on a crisp sunny day, with a low tide anywhere from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“When the water falls out, that sun is going to bake that black mud, and the mud is going to hold heat. When the water starts pushing back up on that black mud, it’s going to warm up two or three degrees. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but to a fish swimming around … he gets happy and gets excited, and says, ‘I feel like I could eat something today.’ ”

Where and when to go

Zeroing in on wintertime schools of redfish can be an intimidating proposition for novice anglers. With dozens of rivers, creeks and bays around Charleston to choose from, where would one even start?

Many experienced inshore anglers use flats boats with poling platforms to work their way far into remote bays and sounds, where mud flats and oyster bars exposed by low water seem to go on forever. The standard approach is to start fishing at low water and ride the tide up, following the schools further into a flat and staying as shallow as possible.

Though Siwarski often poles into these relatively hard-to-navigate spots, he recommends beginning anglers concentrate their winter fishing efforts in the Wando River and the Intracoastal Waterway near Mount Pleasant and further north. Both waterways feature plenty of mud flats that are more easily accessible by all types of boats. The ICW in particular is an easy option because many of the flats along its banks are next to relatively deep water.

“Spend your time on Waterway” if you don’t have a flats boat, Siwarski advises. “In more expansive, slow-rising flats, shallow water prevents you from getting at the fish. You can find them right as the tide turns, but as the water creeps up on the flat, the fish get too far away. You have just a small window of time at dead low tide. As soon as they get enough water to get away from you, they’re gone.

“On the Waterway, where the flat might only be 50 feet wide, you can be sitting in 5 to 8 feet of water and still cast to the grassline. You have those fish now, they can’t get away from you, shallow-wise.”

Siwarski recommends anglers cruise the ICW at low tide, idling their boats as close to the flats as they can while looking for the telltale signs of a redfish school.

“They’ll look like a little torpedo going through the water. It’s unmistakable — a redfish moving through the water.”

And if a big-boat angler spots a school of reds just out of casting range?

“Don’t discount standing on the back of your boat and pushing,” Siwarski says. “With the motor trimmed all the way up, almost every boat 22 feet or less will still float in a foot and a half of water.

“You may look like a fool out there, standing up on a cooler with a bamboo pole, but you’ll get to where the fish are. You’ll look silly, you’ll get made fun of ... but you’re going to be catching fish.”

Cold weather gear and tactics

Siwarski uses medium to medium-heavy rods, generally 7 feet in length, with spinning reels spooled with 10-pound, green Powerpro braided line. The thin diameter of the line allows anglers to cast far and avoid spooking a redfish school.

“Everybody thinks that for redfish you need 20- to 30-pound line,” he says, “but this 10-pound Powerpro has the diameter of 2-pound monofilament, and it actually breaks around 14 or 17 pounds when I’ve tested it. So it’s all you need to handle any redfish inshore in Charleston. ... We’ve caught 36-inch, 13-pound redfish on this tackle like it’s nothing. It’s a fun fight, but you’re not under matched.”

For terminal tackle, Siwarski uses 18-24 inches of 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon leader, which is much harder for fish to see in the clear, cool water. He fishes artificial baits almost exclusively in the colder months and is a big fan of the 5-inch, soft-plastic “jerk shad” lures. He prefers scent-infused jerk shads from Gulp! (in “smelt,” “sardine” and “sapphire shine” color schemes) as well as those made by Z-Man Baits (in “penny” and “opening night” colors).

Siwarski likes Gulp! baits because they incorporate scent, and the Z-Man baits because off their action and durability.

Whichever brand he picks, he rigs them the same, with a 1/16-ounce, 3-ought Gamakatsu flutter hook — “The best hook ever made,” he says.

“No matter what you put on this hook, if you twitch it when it falls, it wobbles the whole way down. The whole bait just shakes. They can’t resist it.”

A shad body rigged on this weighted hook is “the best way to catch these fish,” Siwarski says. “Ninety percent of the time, this set-up is what I’m catching redfish on.”

Siwarski hooks the soft-plastic shad bodies much the same way a plastic worm is Texas-rigged for largemouth bass (see example at right). Using a loop knot from the leader to the hook eye helps ensure natural movement. Done properly, these baits are easy to cast, simple to work and almost completely weedless.

The strategy for fishing these jerk shads is simple: After spotting a school, use a trolling motor or push pole to position the boat ahead of the fish, being careful not to block the school’s path with the boat. Cast the lure up ahead of the fish and let it settle to the bottom. When a fish gets close, lift the rod tip gently, pulling the lure a few inches off the bottom. When the lure flutters back down, the red should nail it.

“When it (the fish) picks it up, wait until the line comes tight, then come back hard on them,” Siwarski says. “It’s a lot of plastic, and they’ve got hard mouths. You’d be pretty hard-pressed to set the hook too hard on a redfish. You can hit them pretty hard, which is a pretty fun part of redfishing to me.”

One great tip Siwarski picked up from DOA Lure founder Mark Nichols is to slice about halfway through the shad body (bottom lure, facing page). This cut acts as a hinge that helps the bait flex out of the way and exposes the hook point when a redfish strike.

“It makes a huge difference,” Siwarski says. “Take your time to cut your baits when you hook them on there. They’re going to tear up faster, but you’re getting good hook-sets and you’re catching fish. That makes a huge difference in hook-up percentages.”

When the going gets tough

Sometimes, even the pros have a hard time sight-casting to reds in clear, cold water.

“When you get into late January and February, you’ll notice a difference in the fish,” Siwarski says. “When that water gets real cold, they get real lazy and real sluggish. I’ve caught fish where they’re so cold, it’s almost like pulling in a wet rag.”

Reds also grow increasingly cautious as winter sets in. Sometimes even the most subtle movement of a bait might send them into a panicked dash for safety.

When chasing such spooky fish, Siwarski prefers scented soft-plastics and might switch to smaller version, like a Gulp! scented shrimp lure on a 1/8-ounce jighead. He’ll also slow his presentation of these lures.

“The big thing we’re going for in the wintertime is scent. … A lot of the time, you don’t have to move the baits. They smell it and suck it up.”

When that approach won’t cure a case of lockjaw, Siwarski turns to natural bait. He uses the same leader setup, but he’ll tie a small swivel (like a Spro size 8) between the leader and mainline and sometimes adds a splitshot or two. He uses a 1- to 3-ought Owner circle hook.

Siwarski says chunks of mullet or fresh blue crab work best. When using crabs, he’ll first rip off the top shell then cut it into quarters. He leaves the legs on and hooks the crab chunk where a fin connects to the body.

“Throw it out there and leave it,” he says. “Don’t move it, just put it in a rod holder. The whole key is to let it sit there. They don’t want to see things moving. They’re spooky, they’re shook up, you’ve caught a few of them.. They just want to amble along like a silly marsh carp, pick this bait off the bottom and be happy.

“He will do it.”

And if you do spook the school, relax. As Siwaraski says, that’s the best part about wintertime red fishing: “No matter how much you shake them up, they’re going to come back.”

Reach Tideline Editor Matt Winter at 843-937-5568 or mwinter@postandcourier.com