Catching Spring Redfish on Florida's Nature Coast

Spring is the season people get wrong. They see the calendar turn and expect the fish to be up on the flats waiting, and when they are not there on the first warm weekend in March they decide the fishing is off. It is not off. It is staggered.

I have run charters out of Homosassa my whole life, and the spring transition does not happen on a date. It happens over weeks, in pushes, and it tracks water temperature rather than the month. Some years the fish are moving out of the deep winter holes by the middle of February. Some years I am still fishing them like it is January in the middle of March. The anglers who do well in spring are the ones carrying a thermometer instead of a calendar.

What follows is how I fish the transition on the Nature Coast, where the fish set up as the water warms, and what I throw at them. If you want the broader picture of finding and working redfish across the year, start with catching redfish on flats, shorelines, and structure.

When Spring Redfish Move Out of Winter Water

The trigger is temperature, and it is a range rather than a number. Movement starts in the low 60s, particularly on sunny afternoons over dark bottom, and it accelerates through the mid 60s.

Through winter the fish are stacked in the deep holes, the canals, and the spring fed rivers where the water stays stable. As the shallows start holding heat and the water climbs through the 60s and into the 70s, they leave those refuges and spread back out onto the flats and around the outside keys. That is the core of the transition.

Sun does as much of this work as air temperature. Afternoon sun on dark bottom will lift a protected flat several degrees over the course of a few hours, and early in spring that means an afternoon trip can beat a morning trip on identical tides. Most people fish spring mornings out of habit carried over from summer.

What makes it confusing is that it does not happen all at once. The movement runs over several weeks, and it runs in waves. A warm stretch pushes a group of fish out. A late front pulls them back toward the deeper water. Then the next warm stretch pushes more of them out, and a few of the first group stay put. For a month or so you can have fish in winter mode and fish in spring mode within a mile of each other.

It is an opportunity rather than a problem, as long as you know it is happening. If the flats are not producing, the deep water probably is, and the reverse holds too. I will check a flat, and if the water is still cold and the fish are not there, I run back to the holes I was fishing in January rather than burning the day hoping.

The way to fish that is a milk run. Pick two or three winter holes and the flats that sit closest to them, and work the whole set inside one tide cycle. You are not looking for the spot. You are looking for which mode the fish are in on that particular day, and once you know, the rest of the day gets easy.

The cold water pattern those fish are still holding is worked through in cold water tactics for winter redfish fishing.

A few things I watch through the transition:

• Water temperature at multiple spots, because a protected bay can run several degrees ahead of open flats on the same morning
• How long the warm stretch has held, since two warm days move fewer fish than a warm week
• Bait showing back up in the shallows, meaning mullet schools working a shoreline, glass minnows flickering in the potholes, or pinfish pecking at your bait, all of which confirm the fish are already there
• Front timing, because the two or three days after a spring front pass is when things stabilize and feeding resumes
• Wind direction, since south and west wind pushes warm Gulf water up onto the flats while a hard north wind behind a front pulls water off them and drops temperature fast

Where Redfish Feed on the Nature Coast in Spring

Once the fish are out, they set up in predictable places, and on this stretch of coast the bottom does most of the work for you.

Western facing points are the first thing I look at. They take afternoon sun, they warm before the surrounding water, and they hold that heat into the evening. Early in the transition, when the water is still marginal, a western facing point can be several degrees warmer than the flat behind it, and a few degrees is enough to concentrate fish. When wind is the dominant factor rather than sun, which is most of the time behind a front, a leeward shoreline will out produce a west facing one. Protection beats exposure when it is blowing twenty.

Cuts between the keys are the second. Water moving through a cut carries bait and pushes it into a confined space, and redfish will sit on the down current side and wait for it. The narrower the cut and the harder the water is moving through it, the more reliable it is, up to a point. Extreme flow makes it hard for a fish to hold and they will slide off to the edges.

Creek mouths and drains produce on the falling water, when everything that has been sitting up in the backcountry gets pulled out through a single opening. I fish the outside of a creek mouth on the drop and the inside of it on the rise.

Limestone bottom and turtle grass is the combination that makes the Nature Coast what it is. The hard limestone holds heat and it holds crabs, shrimp, and small baitfish in the cracks and holes. Turtle grass gives the same food a place to hide and gives the redfish cover to hunt from. Where the two meet, with a little current running across, is where I want to be.

What ties all four together is the same thing that matters every other season. Find the edge. A point with no current on it is just a point. A cut with no bait moving through it is just a hole in a shoreline.

If you want a closer look at the water I am describing, it is covered in Homosassa Florida fishing.

Fishing the Gold Spoon Over Limestone and Grass

A quarter ounce gold spoon is the most useful thing in the boat in spring, and it is what I hand a client who has never done this before.

The reason is coverage. In spring the fish are spread out and moving, and you do not know exactly where on a half mile of shoreline they have set up on a given morning. A spoon lets you find out. It casts a long way, it stays in the strike zone at speed, and it puts out flash and vibration that will pull a fish from a distance in water that is not yet gin clear.

Quarter ounce is the right weight for this bottom. Heavier gets you distance but it also gets you hung in the limestone, and lighter will not stay down or cast into a spring wind. Quarter ounce splits it.

The technique that matters most is what you do the instant the spoon lands. Start retrieving immediately. If you let a spoon sink over rocky limestone bottom you will be in the rocks, and you will spend the morning breaking off and retying instead of fishing. Close the bail and start turning the handle before it settles.

From there it is about speed. I start with a steady retrieve just fast enough to feel the spoon wobbling, and I adjust from there:

• Slow it down if fish are following without committing, which happens in cooler water early in the transition
• Speed it up in warmer water later in spring when they are chasing harder
• Add a pause over a specific piece of structure to let the spoon flutter, which draws strikes from fish sitting tight
• Use a weedless model anywhere the grass is thick, because floating grass will foul a bare treble on every cast

Floating grass is worth planning around in spring rather than fighting. Wind pushes it into lanes and windrows, and those lanes will strip a lure every cast. Either fish the clean water between them or accept that you are throwing something weedless until the wind changes.

I go through my full lure selection and the reasoning behind every one of them in Top 5 Lures for Redfish.

Reading Spring Tides and Moon Phases

Tide matters more than time of day in spring, and it is not close.

Incoming water is what I want. A rising tide pushes warmer water from the Gulf up onto flats that have been sitting shallow and exposed, and it brings bait with it. What incoming water reliably does is stabilize temperature and bring bait. Whether it is actually warmer than what is on the flat depends on the day, because a protected backwater over dark mud can sit warmer than the Gulf on a sunny afternoon. Do not assume the incoming is the warm water. Check it.

The first hour of the outgoing is the other window I fish hard, and a lot of people leave before it. When water starts pulling off a flat, everything that moved up there has to come back through the cuts and the creek mouths, and the fish know it. That first hour concentrates the whole flat into a few openings.

Moon phase stacks on top of this. Around the new and full moons the tides run harder, and the last hour of the incoming on those big tides is as reliable a window as exists on this coast. More water moving means more bait moving, and it means water pushing up onto flats that are normally too shallow to hold fish at all.

What I will not do is fish a beautiful looking spot on slack water because the clock says it is time. If the water is not moving I go look at something else and come back when it is.

The full breakdown of how each tidal stage repositions fish is in reading tidal patterns to catch more redfish.

Live Bait as the Water Warms

Artificials cover water. Bait catches the fish that will not chase.

Early in spring, when the water is still coming up out of the 60s, live shrimp is still the better bait, for the same reason it works all winter. The fish are not fully switched on yet, and a shrimp fished slowly near the bottom is an easy meal that does not require a commitment. Fish it on a light jig head or under a cork over grass, and do not work it hard.

As the water climbs through the 70s, pinfish come back into their own. They get more available, they get bigger, and the redfish get aggressive enough to want something that runs. By late spring a pinfish free lined near a point or fished under a popping cork is my first choice for a bigger fish. It is not automatic though. On very clear water or on fish that have been worked over, a large live shrimp presented well will still beat a pinfish.

The changeover is not a date on the calendar. It is a thing you notice: the shrimp start getting picked apart by bait stealers before a redfish finds them, and that is the water telling you to switch.

Which bait produces when, and how to keep it alive once you have it, is laid out in choosing the best live bait for redfish.

Covering Water Without Burning It

Spring fishing is a mobility game, and the mistake I see most is people sitting too long on a spot that is not producing.

The fish are scattered through the transition. A shoreline that held twenty fish in October might hold three in March, and they might be on one specific rock. If you fish a spot thoroughly and nothing happens, that is information. Move.

But there is a way to move that does not blow the water you are moving into. I fan cast rather than throwing at the same piece of water repeatedly, working from one side of the boat around to the other so I cover the arc in front of me before I reposition. That way I know whether a stretch is empty or whether I just have not put a lure in front of anything yet.

Then I move quietly. Spring water on this coast runs clear, which means longer casts and softer presentations than you need in stained summer water. The fish coming out of winter also have not been worked over much yet, at least away from the popular zones. Around Homosassa on a spring weekend that is not true at all, and those fish are as sharp as any you will find in July.

I shut the outboard down well outside where I want to fish and pole or drift in. That does not mean the trolling motor never comes out. It means low power, short bursts, and spot lock used sparingly rather than running it across a flat at eight in the morning in April, which will empty the whole thing.

The other piece is not overstaying a productive spot either. If I catch two or three fish off a point and it goes quiet, they are usually done, and there are ten more points like it within a mile.

Spring Tackle for Rocky Bottom

The tackle question in spring is about abrasion more than anything else.

Limestone bottom, oyster, and shell will part a leader that would be perfectly adequate on a sand flat. I run thirty pound fluorocarbon in two to three feet through most of the spring, which is heavier than I would use on clean bottom, and I check it with my fingers after every fish. If I feel any roughness at all it gets cut back and retied. A leader that has been dragged across limestone twice is not a leader anymore.

Braid in the fifteen pound range handles everything inshore here, on a seven to seven and a half foot medium or medium light rod with a 2500 or 3000 size reel. Nothing exotic.

The one thing worth being fussy about is hook sharpness. Redfish coming out of winter have been eating crabs and shell bound crustaceans for months, and their mouths are tough. A hook that would stick a fish in September will slide off one in March. I touch up hooks constantly and replace them sooner than most people would.

Common Questions About Spring Redfish Fishing

Fishing Temperature Instead of the Calendar

Spring rewards paying attention more than any other season, because the water is changing underneath you the entire time.

The fish that were stacked in a hole last week are on a flat this week, and half of them will be back in the hole after the next front. There is no single pattern that holds for the whole season. What holds is the logic: warm water pulls fish shallow, moving water positions them, and structure that heats up faster than the water around it will always hold more fish than structure that does not.

Carry a thermometer. Check it in three places before you commit to a plan. If the flat is cold, go fish the hole. If the shoreline you like is warm and the water is moving across it, that is where they are, and a quarter ounce spoon will find them faster than anything else you can throw.

By the time the water settles into the 80s the whole game changes again. That side of it is in catching summer redfish on Florida's Gulf Coast, and the full redfish video library has the on water version of everything above.

Captain William Toney In The Spread, Instructor