Fly Fishing for Redfish in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Fly fishing for Redfish in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina can be one of the most rewarding ways to catch a fish in the Lowcountry. Watching a fish open its mouth and inhale your fly is an incredible experience. For help in witnessing this, you need some understanding of how the fish, or school of fish is going to react when a fly is near it. Having a 100 foot cast with a tight loop, though a great acheivement, and effective in tons of saltwater applications, can often times leave you scratching your head with the redfish. Seeing a redfish's direction, and making a quick accurate cast will prove to be way more effective. The way the fish sees the fly is everything. The majority of the time if a redfish sees something already swimming away from it then it won’t chase it down. It would rather see something swimming perpendicular towards the line it is swimming, and a few feet ahead of it. When it’s done correctly you will see the fish speed up to the fly as it crosses the fish’s path.
The exception to that would be in the spartina grass, with a laid up fish in a pocket, where making a stealthy cast anywhere in the pocket will often times result in a bite. In all other situations a fly landing in a fish’s path and being stripped away from it, is just going to keep you changing flies mindlessly. Landing the fly past the line that the fish is swimming and waiting until it’s within distance to see the fly, then stripping the fly across its path, will make you a hero. To achieve this, an angler should wait to see if a good opportunity to see the fish clearly, presents itself. A redfish is one of the easier fish to get close to on the flats, when it’s looking down for prey it presents a great opportunity to ease the skiff close enough to make a short, accurate cast, past the line it is swimming. It is also very important to have an extra stealthy cast in these situations, due to the close proximity to the fish. Hopefully this helps next time you're on the bow.
