A redfish will eat anything that a largemouth will eat.
“In my opinion, the best harness for redfish is a heavy-wire Hildebrandt with a single gold, number 4.5 Colorado blade,” Browning said. “I attach it to a 1⁄4-ounce or a 1⁄2-ounce jighead. I use one with a big heavy harness because a redfish can destroy a spinnerbait. With a wire swinging on a jighead, it has a little more play and it doesn’t get bent out of shape. I’ve caught 40-pound jacks on that type of bait and they’ve held up.”
Spinnerbaits rank among the most versatile baits on the market. Anglers can use them around thick cover to coax reaction strikes or in open water. Around thick grass, anglers can buzz them or “wake” them just below the surface. Where there is submerged grass, it’s best to run baits just over the tops of grass tips, barely touching them.
“I work all of them about the same,” Thomason said. “I reel about five times and then pause briefly. And it’s during that pause a red may engulf the lure. It seems to trigger the instinct to strike.”
Spinnerbaits are designed primarily for weedy shallows or thick cover. Since spinnerbaits cast long, many anglers use them as “search” baits to see if they can make redfish move or strike. If redfish move in response to the lure but do not strike, it pays to quickly flip a standard soft-plastic bait in the vicinity. But more times than not, when hungry, a red will crush the spinner.
Spinnerbaits also work extremely well for sight fishing. In clear water, you may see fish lurking near cover, in potholes, cruising freely, or tailing. In dingy water, you have to depend on spotting wakes caused by redfish. With a spinnerbait, common sense dictates that you don’t toss the lure on the fish’s nose, like you can with a fly or light soft bait. Rather, cast the lure well beyond the fish and run it past its nose or throw several feet in front of it, just close enough to allow it to see the bait.
“About 25 percent of the time, we throw some type of spinnerbait,” said Greg Watts, a professional redfish angler who won the 2003 Redfish Cup championship with his brother, Brian. “In clear water, we sight-fish. If we see a redfish cruising, we consider that a “50:50” fish. In other words, there’s about a 50 percent chance of making it bite. In water that’s not as clear, we throw to targets like matted grass, stumps, points, potholes, the ends of logs, or whatever redfish-holding structure that’s prevalent in the locale that we fish.”
Most anglers agree that a spinnerbait’s churning blades annoy redfish into striking even when not actively feeding. Toss baits into shoreline pockets or run them parallel to grass lines, dropoffs or other cover. As a rule of thumb, for clear water pick a small spinnerbait, and retrieve it a bit on the fast side so that the fish doesn’t get too good a look at it. In dingy water, use large baits that produce significant vibrations. In stained water, run baits more slowly so fish can find them easily. Of course, that can be said about all lures in clear or dirty water.
In matted weeds, redfish explode on buzzbaits just as bass do. Buzzbaits, with their specially designed blades, really churn on top, and also make excellent search baits in waters so weed-choked that it’s impossible to fish a jig or topwater, and a softbait might not be seen. If a redfish is sitting in a shallow pocket surrounded by thick grass, repeatedly toss a buzzbait toward it. Many times, you can make it strike, akin to a spawning bass on a bed. A spinnerbait is seen as an intruder in this case. Nothing aggravates a redfish more than a noisy buzzbait sputtering past its nose several times.
Though spinnerbaits excel in extremely shallow water, they work effectively in deeper water, too. In deep water, or when frosty temperatures make fish lethargic, try “slow-rolling” your spinnerbait with a steady retrieve just off the bottom. You want to barely turn the blades. Let the bait plink against oyster shells occasionally or hit the bottom, making a mud trail. Slow-rolling works exceptionally well when you run the bait along dropoffs, parallel to banks, jetties or other linear structure.
