The high water brought about by equinox tides each spring and fall floods some areas that otherwise would not hold fish. Reds make their way onto these flooded flats in search of fiddler crabs and they are great fun to catch as they forage for food.
The mouth on a redfish is under it's chin, and as it feeds along the bottom, the top tip of it's tail will protrude from the water in the shape of a small triangle. It is very obvious from the water commotion that a red has found a crab. Striking fish will charge forward and aggressively turn on the prey. It was very obvious to us as we stood there next to the boat that fish were finding prey all around us.
I wanted to use fly tackle, but a stiff wind caused by the outskirts of a tropical storm two hundred miles to our west prevented any thoughts of putting a streamer anywhere near a fish, so we opted for light spinning gear.
Ordinarily I would use a live shrimp on a bare hook with no weight. Estimating the length of the target redfish by the size of it's tail tip, I would cast the shrimp out in front of the red. The wind prevented that option as well, so we used a small jig head to hold the shrimp. A jig head won't allow the bait to settle naturally, but in this wind we really had no choice.
This is usually a slow, quiet, stalking fishing method, but as it turned out, the number of fish charging and turning on bait allowed us to use jig heads without spooking the fish. We actually could wade anywhere we wanted and the fish did not seem to mind. Maybe they were just that hungry!
We waded and cast baits to a number of fish, and caught ten fish each before we began to get concerned that the tide was rolling out. We did not want to get stranded for six hours waiting for our boat to re-float! The fishing only lasted about forty-five minutes on this flat, but it continued from the boat for another four hours. All those fish that were on the flat moved off with the tide and situated themselves along the edge of the flat in deeper water. We simply followed their lead, and continued to catch fish!
The area we fished was off the intracoastal waterway in Northeast Florida, but it could have been anywhere from Texas all the way around and up to Maryland. Equinox tides affect everyone, and fish react the same in all localities. Maybe it's not redfish in your area, but the fish will move onto shallow flooded areas in search of food, and if you know where those areas are, you can catch these fish!