Redfish on Gulp

2-10-2010--Still cold and windy but the redfish don't seem to mind. Took one local fisherman today. We left the dock at Goose Island after lunch and had fantastic catching of redfish. The water was cold at 45 degrees on the surface but the fish didn't seem to mind. We caught and released 19 keeper redfish. There were actually more small reds than keeper size. We estimated that we released about 100 undersized reds. Nearly all the bites came when the bait was stopped. You had to let the bait settle to the bottom. If nothing picked it up then we'd move it a few inches. Once I figured out how to get them to bite I went for over an hour with a bite on every cast. I missed a couple of them but other than that it was a fish every cast. The ticket to catching was white, 3 inch gulp in shrimp pattern. The reds were regurgiating very small stripped minnows about 3/4 inch long when you brought them to hand. It looked like the pelicans were feeding on the same tiny baits. In fact it was the pelicans that showed us where to fish on the shoreline. We didn't try for black drum today because you really need shrimp or crab for that. We knew trout fishing would not be good due to the extremely cold water. The temperature starts to become lethal for trout at 45 degrees. They survive by going much deeper where the water stays warmer. We did catch some trout on Monday but it was a lot warmer then and they were barely keepers. Forecast is for rain all day tomorrow and wintry weather for several more days.