I can always tell when I’m fishing with someone who is predominantly a bass angler. The gargantuan tackle box is a dead giveaway. Every lure, every color. You know who you are.
Fishing Gulf of Mexico saltwater grassflats in winter doesn’t demand that kind of extensive lure selection; many days, I start with one lure and never switch.
Florida’s winter grassflats present a mixed bag of challenges and advantages. First, cold water kills off microscopic algae that can tint summer flats a slight green or brown. The resulting Bahamas-clear water makes it easier to spot laid-up or cruising fish, but that works both ways. Fish can also more easily make out the profile of an approaching kayak angler.
Secondly, winter pours cold water on a predator’s metabolism and aggressiveness. Following a severe cold front, they can be downright comatose and ignore virtually all attempts to feed them. Lure presentation speed therefore needs to match the attitude of the fish. Slow it down. That works better with some lures than others.
The news ain’t all bad. Late summer and autumn conditions in many areas literally narrow the parameters of effective lure presentation in shallow water. For instance, a kayaker working in two feet of water with a sand bottom can choose from a wide range of effective lures. But add 18 inches of bottom growth and toss in some floating seagrass, and every lure turns to salad. Those problems are largely alleviated in winter. Bottom growth recedes — seagrass is shorter, and there’s more bare mud or sand bottom. Again, a two-edged sword. Tall seagrass that shielded the kayaker’s silhouette and buffered vibration and noise from hull slap is diminished. Good or bad, anglers can pack away the weedless rigs until next summer.
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To me, lure selection is more about matching water conditions than trying to feed a specific type of lure to the fish. Anglers are pickier about the lures they throw than the fish are about what they eat. In other words, the presentation is more important than the bait; the prettiest lure on the planet is useless if cloaked in weeds or is retrieved inappropriately.
Stealth and retrieval speed are the keys in winter, and those are the major factors in my lure choices. It comes down to this: A fish is a lot less likely to be aware of my presence 40 yards from the kayak than it is at 15. I’m a proponent of long casts no matter the time of year, but they become paramount in winter. So I choose lures and tackle that allow bombing fish from long range while offering the capacity to work them effectively at a variety of speeds.
That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Let’s get down to specifics.
Sometimes, winter fishing comes down to searching a lot of water. Nothing does that better in shallow water than a topwater plug. Most cast well, and are among the easiest to manipulate at a variety of speeds. I generally fish with three rods rigged and ready; if I’m exploring a flat less than two feet deep — especially one I’m not intimately familiar with – one will almost always have a light-colored walk-the-dog topwater attached. Choose the model you have the most confidence in. I personally prefer a low-frequency, one-knocker more often than not.
If the fish eat the topwater, I’m thrilled to stick with it. The visual reward of a fish blowing up the surface is hard to beat. But some days, fish are reluctant to break the surface. If I get no response, or fish waking on a topwater or short-striking, it’s time for my go-to lure on the second rod — a hard, suspending, lipless twitchbait — usually a LiveTarget Sardine. I catch far more giant trout and snook up shallow on this lure than anything else in my inventory, and redfish eat it just fine. Whatever your preference, the trick is to find a lure that actually suspends in the required depth range. I stick to natural colors.
The third rod gets rigged according to the target du jour. If redfish are the primary quarry, it gets a soft-plastic that works best with a slow, steady retrieve while emitting a lot of vibration — something like the big-tailed Egret Mambo Mullet. If trout are the more likely target, I tie on a soft-plastic twitchbait and light jighead. Flounder or pompano invariably get the Egret Vudu Shrimp treatment. Again, I generally select natural colors in all these lures in typically clear winter conditions.
There’s no need to load the boat with gear. A couple of each and you can cover any situation you encounter. When I’m in keep-it-simple, stupid mode — my mantra for getting into kayak fishing in the first place – I take one rod with a Suspending Sardine and have complete confidence that I’ll catch just as many fish (and probably bigger fish) than if I load up the kitchen sink and switch lures constantly. If nothing else, it keeps me from over-thinking what is essentially a simple sport.
