Soft plastics tipped with dead shrimp is the ticket, guide says
Calm days are few and far between this month, but if you can snag one, there are plenty of tackle-busting fish waiting for you, according to Dularge guide Capt. Anthony Kyzar.
“We run out to the platforms and catch redfish, sheepshead and drum,” he said.
The coolest part about making the long run out there, Kyzar said, is the fact that anglers can see the fish strike.
Kyzar remembered a trip in early January with Capt. Chris Venable and company where this was particularly true.
“We had probably 100 (sheepshead) around the boat,” he said. “You watched them eat it. If one of them didn’t get it, and the other one got, it they were fighting for it.”
And the best thing is catching them couldn’t be easier, Kyzar said.
“They’re right under the surface of the water,” he said. “You just drop a shrimp on a jighead and you can watch them eat it.”
This makes the fish especially good for kids. They’re easy to catch, and you’ll likely go home with some sore arms.
“They’re all huge that time of year,” he said. “The sheepshead are powerful. It’s like hooking an 8-pound bluegill.”
For anglers that squawk at running that far out, Kyzar said the redfishing can be good in the dead-end canals on the inside, which have no tidal movement.
“The fish get out of the moving water,” he said. “One thing because it’s cold, and another because of the sediment. Whenever we get these big 3-foot tide ranges, you’ve got all that sediment in the water ,and the water’s going to be colder.”
Kyzar said the canals are around 7 feet deep, and he likes throwing Matrix Shad soft plastics tipped with dead shrimp on the bottom.
However, he did say the water temperature dictates how agreeable the fish will be to a straight plastic.
“When the water temperature is in the upper-50s, you don’t even need to put the shrimp on there,” he said.
