The same three variables play a major part in Captain Faver’s fishing decisions. Too much rain and lack of bait will have him fishing closer to the inlet mouths. Clean water and plentiful baitfish situations will find him in the ICW at the mouth of a creek on an outgoing tide.
Northeast Florida redfish can be found in one or all of four basic areas. They will be on the tidal flats, in the creeks and creek mouths, along the ICW banks, or on the jetty rocks. This fact puts four more variables into the equation.
Given these variables, just where can you find some good redfish action during June? That answer depends on the answer to the variable equation! First of all, following several days of rainfall, plan to fish the inlet mouths or jetties. The bait and the reds will have moved out of the creeks and ICW to find better water and the jetties and inlets are where they head.
Jetty fishing has become almost an art over the past several years. Knowing the bottom structure around the jetties is crucial to your success. Reds will school and hold in underwater eddies just out of the current. Getting a bait down to them becomes the challenge.
Often boats will anchor within several feet of each other off the end of the jetties, all of them trying to position themselves along the underwater edge of the rocks. Those that are successful hook up on almost every drop of the bait. Boats that are as little as fifty feet away from that underwater edge have a problem even getting one bite. The reds are that concentrated.
Along the jetties and rocks, look for the slower current and smaller eddies. These areas will hold redfish. A trolling motor helps keep your boat over the area while you drop a bait into the slower moving water.
If there has been little or no rain, the bait, and subsequently the reds, can be found in the ICW and in the creeks and sloughs that enter the ICW. Look for the baitfish and fish the outgoing tide.
If you plan to fish the ICW and the creeks, you need to plan your trip to coincide with the outgoing tide. Most serious redfish anglers on the First Coast fish the ICW for only a half-day. They make sure they are in place when the tide is about half down and outgoing.
As the water recedes from the banks of the ICW, look for big reds pushing water in front of them. Smaller reds will school and several of them will make a large commotion as they move along the bank. It’s easy to tell whether or not the water bulge is a red. When the water erupts along the bank and finger mullet scatter in all directions, it’s a safe bet that a big red is out there.