Reading a Redfish Tail

A redfish with its tail out of the water has committed to something. It is head-down on the bottom, working a crab or a shrimp out of the mud, and for those few seconds it is both the easiest fish on the flat to approach and the hardest to feed.

The reason is vision. A feeding redfish has its eyes pointed at the bottom, and a redfish's eyes are not good to begin with — they are set for detecting movement in dirty water at close range, not for picking a fly out of the middle distance. Everything about the presentation follows from that.

What the tail is telling you

A tail held straight up and barely moving is a fish that has found something and is staying with it. That fish is not going anywhere for the next several seconds. You have time to set up, take the wind into account, and make one good cast.

A tail that waves and slaps is a fish moving as it feeds — working along an edge, rooting and stepping forward. You have to lead that fish, and you have to guess how far. Watch it through two or three cycles before you cast. The rhythm is usually consistent, and the direction of the slap tells you which way the head is pointed.

A tail that flickers once and disappears is a fish that has already moved on, or a fish that heard the boat. Let it go.

The cast

Three to four feet ahead of the fish, and slightly past it. The fly should land on the far side of where the fish is going, so that when you move it, it moves across the fish's field of view rather than away from it.

Then stop. This is the part that separates people who catch tailing redfish from people who chase them. The fly should sit on the bottom until the fish is close enough to see it — a foot, maybe two. Then one short strip. Not a long pull. A crab does not sprint across open mud; it hops and hides.

If the fish tips down on the fly, do not trout-set. Strip-set, low and hard, and keep stripping until you feel weight.

Why you miss them

Most refusals on a tailing fish are presentation, not pattern. The fly landed too close and spooked the fish; it landed too far and was never seen; or it was stripped away before the fish had a chance. A tan crab pattern the fish never saw fails exactly as completely as a bad one.

Wind is the other half. On the Texas coast you are usually casting into fifteen knots, and a fly that has to be delivered accurately at forty feet into that wind is a fly you should be practicing with on grass. The fish do not care how the cast felt.

When to leave a fish alone

A tailing fish in six inches of water with a hard bottom will spook from the sound of a fly line hitting the surface. If you cannot get an angle where the line lands outside the fish's zone, take the shot anyway — you are not going to see many of these — but expect to be wrong. Some fish are simply positioned in a way that does not permit a cast, and the honest response is to pole quietly past and find another.