Late one autumn afternoon, a spring tide begins to flood the grasses of the salt marsh. A fiddler crab leaves its burrow and climbs a cordgrass stem, searching in the leaf nodes for the bits of organic matter it uses as food. Intent upon its feeding, it fails to notice a redfish working its way through the flooded grasses. The redfish detects a bit of movement, and in an instant the hapless crab disappears into the redfish's maw, its fate sealed by the crushers in the fish's throat. The salt marshes provide one of the most unique fly rod fisheries imaginable on spring tides during the late spring, summer, and early fall.
Hungry redfish enter the flooding marsh searching for crabs.
As they wallow through the grass, they can be sightfished. Although most any fly will work, crab patterns are the fly of choice. These fish average from six to eight pounds. Redfish, seatrout, and flounder can all be caught in Cumberland Sound and the many tidal creeks that flow through the marsh. The water is loaded with sediment and is quite dark, so flies which push water or make some type of noise are preferred.