Five out of the last 7 days has been spent wading the flats, at all all hours, morning, afternoon and evening, in all kinds of weather such as winds blowing North at 20-knots or a gentle breeze from the East at 10-knots. As usual the fish behavior and locations along with water levels are certainly different each time. This morning was no exception and as my lower back cried out for relief and a much needed break, I can’t help but wonder when I will have a few hours to spare and go back out to see what kind of no good the fish are up to!

Red fish counts are strong but not in great quantities just yet, some days the balance between number of stingrays and red fish is toppled like just the other day when I only saw one red fish but counted 22 stingrays.

Red Grass Flats Redfish

The Texas Shuffle is a critical maneuver if you want to keep your legs from being pierced by the barb of an old stingray and at this point it is quite the primal instinct for me to glide my feet across the mud and grass flats much like one would glide along while cross country skiing. Same motion of the legs and feet and one other benefit of doing this is to allow the toes of the front foot to feel for the next hidden hole that is ever so slightly filled in with a light smackery of detritus. It seems that most holes I discover are caused by old prop scars as they can be trench-like in shape and size. Others are soft mud pits which you could lay down in if it weren’t for the 12-24″ of water covering it. That’s one bath I don’t really want to take. Onto the next one! Keep your hooks sharp, just in case you run across some big bull redfish busting tiny shrimp just before sunset and you still have a one hour wade just to get back to dry land.