Outdoors: Hunt for red October finds plenty of action in the Gulf this time of year

Red October is officially in full swing.

Swarms of redfish have taken over the flats, and anglers have been cashing in on the hard-fighting flats gamefish that range in schools from a few to a few hundred. It’s a blast from the past of what Gulf anglers remember fondly.

Over the past few years, redfish schools were lacking around the west coast of Florida. Sarasota Bay was slow to recover from red tide while the flats of Tampa Bay had schools of fish few and far between. Snook were the focus on most charters and redfish occasionally crashed the party.

But this fall has been different. Sarasota Bay is back alive along with the Manatee River, Terra Ceia and Tampa Bay. Schools of big fish over 30 inches gathered together and have remained together for a few weeks. With any luck they’ll remain for a few more.

On afternoons this week, I partook in the redfish action. Bait was plentiful not only in the Manatee River but in Tampa Bay. Pelicans diving and seagulls flocking showed the way, and in a few throws of a 10-foot Fitec cast net, plenty of bait was acquired. Enough to chum heavy, something necessary to keep the aggressive redfish interested for a short period of time. I prefer the outgoing tide to find them schooling as they drop off the flats and onto the edge of sandbars and into deep holes.

Once bait is acquired the hunt begins. These fish don’t sit still for long, always looking for another meal, and the way to find them is to be on the move. I love to look for mullet schools jumping and big, violent pushes of water. Big schools of redfish can literally make the water around them look red.

And then it happens — a school is located and as an angler there are a few options. You can cast lures like gold spoons or soft plastics immediately into them, hooking up as they keep moving along. Or you can chum heavy with live or dead bait and hope to keep them around for multiple hook ups and mayhem. The choice is yours.

When the fish settle down, boats can work in tandem and fish a school for hours, keeping rods bent and lines tight for nearly as long as they want. But silence and teamwork is needed between boats in a scenario like this, and one overzealous group can ruin it for all.

I prefer to be away from other boats, and that’s why I prefer my afternoon weekday trips when a school can be fished alone. Even then, a man on a jet-ski decided to run within casting distance of our boat one afternoon, sending the fish pushing along.

Fired up redfish will eat nearly anything. As one captain finds a school he experiments with what they’re willing to eat. The results? Ham, bare hooks, ice cubes, and even bananas were tossed into gorging redfish and eaten! The fish have been aggressively feeding and it’s an amazing sight.

Returning soon Tampa Bay anglers will once again be able to keep them for the dinner table starting Oct. 12th. But feelings have been mixed on the reopening.

“Way too soon!” says one captain.

“Well the redfish were on fire, that might change now unfortunately,” says another angler.

“The science overwhelmingly says it should be opened,” explains a southwest Florida charter captain, who was excited to see the opening. “I was blown away at how high the numbers of redfish in southwest Florida were.”

I personally enjoy the catch-and-release factor of redfish, but understand anglers who want to keep them for a meal. Either way, it’s the absolute best time to get out and do a little hunting for your own red October.

Jon Chapman writes a weekly fishing and outdoors column for The Bradenton Herald.