December marks transition time from fall to winter for Mississippi’s saltwater gamefish. Learn how to get in their way, and you’ll have some of the best fishing of the year.
O.T. Sutton was grinning as he took the helm of his boat in Pass Harbor, a smile bigger than a child overlooking his trick-or-treat booty the morning after Halloween.
There was a pronounced glee in his voice, too, unlike what you normally get from a grizzled, old fisherman at sunrise on a cool morning, so one had to ask what was up on this early December day.
“So many fish, so many choices,” Sutton said, gushing a cloud of vapor with the words, “and we ain’t got to go far to find them.”
With that, the captain spun his boat away from the dock and pointed it toward the exit to the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf of Mexico.
“So, what you want, trout, reds, sheepsheads, flounder?” he asked, then answered. “You want redfish, always redfish. Stupid question.”
Fifteen minutes later, the first red thumped to the floor of the deck, a 22-inch victim of a Strike King Trout Magic spinnerbait bounced off a man-made reef about 100 yards off the front beach somewhere near Pass Christian. Or, was it Long Beach?
It was a perfect start to a fun day of chasing fish on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, one that would end with a box full of assorted fish and a fuel tank down only 10 gallons. I don’t know which of the two made Sutton happiest.
“That’s the great thing about December down here on the coast,” he said. “These fish are transitioning from where they summer to where they winter. They are in shallow, and when you can catch a calm day with a decent tide, you can catch a bunch of them without a lot of work.
“You do have to clean them, but that’s the kind of work we don’t usually complain about, isn’t it?”
Five hours on the water put 14 specks, 10 sheepshead, six reds, two ground mullet and, saving the best for last, 12 flounder in the box.
“That little flurry on the flounder at that last stop was the icing on the cake,” Sutton said. “Been a few years since I’ve found that many in a wad at one spot, but they were wadded up in there good. If we’d have had more bait shrimp, I bet we’d still be catching them.”
The end of the season
Diehard fishermen along the Gulf Coast love December — and even winter — on the water for several reasons, the primary being that fish are usually willing to eat.
“It’s also not hot,” said Capt. Sonny Schindler of Ocean Springs. “And after struggling through 90- and 100-degree days and bright sun all summer, I love a break.”
“We don’t have to burn a lot of gas,” said Capt. Ronnie Daniels of Pass Christian. “The beaches and coastal rivers fill with trout and reds.”
“Flounder,” said Capt. Robert Earl McDaniel of D’Iberville, kind of matter-of-factly. “I love the flatfish.”
Sutton still loves to run out to the Biloxi Marsh, which requires a Louisiana license to fish.
“This time of year, even on the calmest days, you can pretty much have hundreds — if not thousands — of acres to yourself,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about running all the way out to get to a spot and have a boat sitting right where I want to be. Everybody goes deer hunting, I guess, either that or they don’t want to fish in a little cold weather.
“You do have to deal with duck hunters, and there’s a lot of them, but the places I fish aren’t exactly what they are looking for. I’m fishing the main bayous more in December, especially during a cool snap. If I can find a good drain feeding a deep spot on a falling tide, I can usually catch both specks and reds in the same spot and get all I want without moving.”
Bait issue
One problem coastal fishermen can find in December and other cold months is a shortage of live bait, including shrimp. They can get few and far between.
“We have to make do,” Sutton said. “Redfish, heck, they’ll hit anything, and frozen bait shrimp works good enough on them. Specks are far more particular about what they want. I’m not saying they won’t eat bait shrimp, I just know they aren’t aggressive. We have to switch to plastics, even if we’re fishing under corks. These days, companies are making better looking shrimp than nature, and they even smell like shrimp.”
Sutton will drive a main bayou, like Grand or Biloxi, in the marsh and look for smaller streams, aka drains, running into the bayou. He’ll pole down at the side of the mouth and then fish the entire drainage area looking for the fish.
With two people in the boat, he likes to have two lines with bait shrimp working the shallow edges of the pass targeting redfish. They sit on the bottom waiting for a red to swim past. At the same time, the two anglers will work the deeper area in the bayou looking for trout with plastics.
“If we do happen to have some live bait, either shrimp or minnows, then we put them on Carolina rigs and work the bottom of the bayou for trout,” Sutton said. “You might have to wait them out, but sooner or later a school of trout will come through and find the drain and check it out. They know the tide is bringing bait out of the back of the ponds, and they will look.”
Bridges or reefs?
In last month’s issue of Mississippi Sportsman, we took a look at how fishermen use the bridges of U.S. 90 (the coast highway) that cross the bays to produce fish that are transitioning. The pilings of those bridges — and we’ll use the one connecting Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian in Hancock County as an example — will hold an assortment of fish.
“Quick and easy, and that’s good on a cold, blustery day,” said Schindler. “We can get there in a matter of minutes, anchor down, and go to work on reds, sheepies and puppy drum. For a family trip, it doesn’t get much better, especially if there isn’t a lot of fishing experience involved. It’s easy, once you learn to put the bait against the piling.”
But, other captains, like Daniels, look elsewhere.
“I’m not a fan of the bridges,” he said. “I mean, I know they are good and I will fish them, but I like to fish the reefs and the bays and look more for speckled trout. The reefs that were built out of (Hurricane Katrina) rubble are fantastic opportunities. They concentrate fish just like the bridge pilings, except the reefs can hold trout. The bridges, not so much.”
Weather plays into the decision.
“On a brutally cold day, there’s no doubt that the bridges are the way to go,” Schindler said. “The fish hit those pilings as they transition from outside to inside the bays, find the cover and stop to see if the current will bring them a meal. They will eventually move up into the bay, but (they) will hang around the pilings as long as they have something to eat.
“When we find a hot piling, we can anchor down and fish the current. We aren’t as blasted by winds as we’d be in open water.”
On a north wind, proper positioning on the south side of a piling can serve as a wave break, providing a more stable fishing platform. That’s good for a person not used to the rocking action.
Daniels counters the mainland forms a pretty good wave break for the many reefs that dot the front beaches.
“The water is not that rough, but the winds can make it hard,” he said. “You are exposed to the wind, and that can create some difficulties, like cold conditions, boat positioning and tough casting. But when the wind is calm, man, you can’t beat it at all. Those reefs provide perfect holding places, the kind of habitat that game fish are looking for.”
The bays
Mississippi has major bays on three of the four major river systems that dump into the Gulf — the Pascagoula, Biloxi and Jordan. The Pearl River is shared with Louisiana, serving as the border, and it provides more of a marsh estuary than it does an actual bay.
“We don’t have to leave Biloxi Bay to catch fish in the winter, starting with December,” said McDaniel, whose WhipaSnapa Guide Service is headquartered about a block north of the bay. “Trout move up in the bays in the winter, and I’ve got friends who catch them right off their back yards. Black drum, what we call puppy drum, are also real thick in the cold months.
“Sheepshead stay more in the deep in current, but you can catch a few of them shallow, too. Redfish are everywhere.”
Fishing the bay is a lot like fishing the marsh; fishermen must find the cuts, points, drains and other structure/cover that will attract fish. Reading the water is critical.
“The key to fishing anywhere down here is reading the water, and knowing what the tide is doing,” Daniels said. “If you can find where water is mixing, like where water is pulling out of a drain into a bayou or from a bayou into a bay, hang on, and check that place hard. That is current pulling bait out of the backwater on a falling tide, and the fish will gang up.”
Sutton said his best day in Bay St. Louis was one when the tide was ripping hard, falling as fast as he’d ever seen it.
“The water was pulling out of a bayou or drain, and when it hit the bay, it was running hard over a point about 3 feet deep,” he said. “The bottom had a good, hard, shell bottom for the most part, and we parked against the bank within easy downwind casting distance and hammered them. First time I’d ever limited on both trout and reds in one spot, and we had three people. Bud, that’s a lot of fish.”
- For information on Robert Earl McDaniel’s WhipaSnapa Guide Service, call 228-229-6978.
- For information on Sonny Schindler’s Shore Thing Guide Service, call 228-342-2295.
- For information on Ronnie Daniels’ Fisher-Man Guide Service, call 228-295-0511.
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