Megafin JournalRedfish · Flood tides
The Last Flood Tides: Tailing Redfish Before the Marsh Goes Quiet
On the biggest tides of fall, Lowcountry redfish push into the flooded spartina to dig for fiddler crabs. The pattern doesn’t end on a date. It fades as the water cools, the crabs go quiet and the sea itself begins to drop. Here is how to read the flood tides left in 2026, and what comes after them.
The water comes into the marsh in stages. First it fills the creek, then the bare mud along the bank, then the short grass behind it. On a big autumn tide it keeps coming until the spartina stands in a few inches of clear water with only its tips showing. Somewhere in that grass a blunt copper tail tips up, wavers and slides back under. That is a redfish with its head in the mud, digging for a fiddler crab.
It is one of the most specific shots in American saltwater fly fishing: a feeding fish, in inches of water, inside the grass, on a tide that gives you a couple of hours at most. It is also seasonal in a way a calendar only partly explains. In South Carolina’s Lowcountry, the grass usually goes quiet sometime in November. Not on a fixed date and not all at once. The water cools, the crabs pull back into the mud, and the sea that floods the marsh begins its own winter decline.
This year, the tides that remain are worth knowing exactly.
Why redfish go into the grass
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources describes the movement plainly. During the warm months, as the incoming tide reaches the marsh grass, young red drum move into it. What draws them is food. SCDNR puts fiddler crabs at about 80 percent of the diet of these young fish in the marsh.
Fiddlers feed on exposed mud at low tide. As the water rises, they tend to plug their burrows and wait it out, a habit biologists described more than a century ago. Redfish arrive in the window when the marsh surface is flooded and the crabs are underneath it. To get one out, a fish tips down and roots in the mud, and its tail breaks the surface. A tail tells you more than where the fish is. It tells you which way the fish is facing, that its head is down and that it is feeding rather than traveling.
Not every high tide puts fish in the grass. The marsh surface sits at a certain elevation, and the tide has to clear it with enough water for a redfish to swim but not so much that the tail stays under. Capt. Robert McCarley, who fishes Bulls Bay, told Carolina Sportsman that good tailing flats hold roughly 4 to 24 inches of water.
Guides describe the trigger tide in local numbers. One Charleston outfitter cites high tides of six feet or more. Owen Plair, writing about Beaufort and Hilton Head, has said he prefers tides between 7.8 and 8.5 feet. In northeast Florida, a Florida Sportsman writer puts the ideal at 5.4 feet or more. These numbers don’t contradict one another. They come from different places with different tidal ranges, read off different references. Learn the number for your own marsh and the station it is keyed to, and don’t borrow anyone else’s.
What changes when fall turns cold
Fall is, by most guides’ accounts, the best part of the flood-tide season. Slackwater Expeditions in Charleston calls September and October two of the most productive months for it. Plair has noticed that tailing usually thins out about two hours into the tide, except in the fall, “when fish seem to feed nonstop through the tide.”
The end comes from three directions.
The first is temperature. SCDNR’s account is direct: in winter, when water temperatures are low and fiddler crabs are no longer active, red drum still move with the tides but become sluggish. Fiddlers are cold-blooded. A federal species profile of the Atlantic marsh fiddler records hibernating crabs dug out of New Jersey marsh in winter.
The number you will hear on the water is 65°F. Plair fishes the floods from mid-March to the end of November and puts it bluntly: “Once the water temp gets below 65 the fiddlers go down and the redfish stop tailing.” Terry Lacoss, writing in Florida Sportsman about northeast Florida, says the best flood-tide fishing comes in the fall “when water temperatures are at least 65 degrees.” Treat that as what it is: a field benchmark used by experienced people in different places, not a biological switch. We found no research that ties the end of the flood-tide season to one water temperature. The crabs feed on exposed mud, so what they respond to is more likely the temperature of that mud and the air above it than the creek where a guide dips a thermometer. A warm week in November can bring them back up.
The benchmark is still useful, because it follows the season. NOAA’s water-temperature sensor at the Charleston Customhouse Wharf has a long record. In every year with complete fall data from 2014 through 2025, the harbor’s three-day average first fell below 65°F sometime between November 1 and December 2. The middle of that range was mid-November. This year the harbor averaged 73.6°F on October 18 and 66.4°F on October 27. Harbor water is not flat water. A few inches over mud warms faster on a sunny afternoon and cools faster on a cold night. But the direction is plain, and this fall is running on the early side.
The second is the crabs themselves. Writing about late-season tailing fish, Carolina Sportsman noted that a cold snap of more than a few days can drive the crabs deep into the mud and end the sessions, even when the tides are right.
The third is the water. At Charleston, sea level runs high in the fall. From 2006 through 2025, Charleston’s average monthly sea level peaked in September and October and was about a foot lower in January. This October the harbor ran well above even the predicted tides. From October 18 through 27, the daily average sat 0.9 to 1.5 feet above NOAA’s astronomical prediction. Flood-tide anglers feel that extra water, and winter takes it away. Fewer high tides clear the grass, and the ones that do clear it by less.
The flood tides left in 2026
After this week, NOAA predicts two more series of strong tides this fall. The table shows the strongest predicted high of each series at three reference stations. Heights are in feet above mean lower low water (MLLW). Times are local: eastern daylight time through October 31 and eastern standard time from November 1. These are astronomical predictions. The water that actually arrives depends on wind and weather.
| Tide series | Charleston (8665530) | Beaufort (8667999) | Fort Pulaski, Ga. (8670870) | Light |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct. 28–Nov. 2 (this week) | 6.85 ft, Oct. 28, 9:57 a.m. | 9.36 ft, Oct. 28, 11:06 a.m. | 8.86 ft, Oct. 28, 10:05 a.m. | Highs move from midmorning into early afternoon |
| Nov. 6–11 | 6.42 ft, Nov. 8, 6:59 a.m. | 8.37 ft, Nov. 8, 8:04 a.m. | 8.24 ft, Nov. 8, 7:07 a.m. | Sunrise about 6:43. Early in the series the flood comes in the dark; at Charleston, the Nov. 9–11 highs fall between 7:39 and 8:56 a.m. |
| Nov. 22–29 | 6.78 ft, Nov. 25, 7:52 a.m. | 9.29 ft, Nov. 25, 9:02 a.m. | 8.82 ft, Nov. 25, 8:00 a.m. | Sunrise about 7:00. At Charleston, the Nov. 25–28 highs fall between 7:52 and 10:45 a.m. |
After this week, the late-November series is the strongest left. Its November 25 high is the highest predicted at Charleston from October 29 through at least the end of April 2027. After it, the big tides thin out. The number of Charleston highs predicted at six feet or more falls from 25 in October to 16 in November, six in December, four in January and two in February.
The tide clock and the thermometer disagree. The biggest water arrives Thanksgiving week, after the point when the harbor has usually dropped below 65°F. The early-November series is smaller but likely warmer. If you can fish only one, that is the decision: more water or warmer water. Watch the forecast and the water temperature in the days before, not just the tide table.
Bigger is not always better. On the largest tides some flats go too deep for tails to show. When that happens, move to higher marsh or wait for the water to fall back toward the depth where fish tip up.
Wind changes the numbers. McCarley and Plair both make the same point: an east wind pushes more water into the marsh, and a west wind holds it out. NOAA’s predictions don’t include wind, and as October showed, the difference can be a foot or more. Check the observed water level at your station on the morning you go.
A station is a reference, not your flat. Beaufort and Fort Pulaski show bigger numbers because their tidal range is bigger. A bigger number there doesn’t mean more water on the grass than at Charleston. A flat up a long creek can flood later and lower than the station suggests. Match your flat to the nearest station, then learn its number by watching it.
How to fish the last flood tides
Find the flat before the tide does. Plair’s scouting method holds up. On satellite imagery, look for short spartina, roughly 8 to 16 inches tall, on hard bottom. Walk it at low tide to see whether it is covered in fiddler crab burrows, and note the feeder creek, because that is usually where fish come onto the flat first. Grass and crabs don’t guarantee fish, he warns. And never wade into grass taller than two or three feet. The pluff mud under it can trap you.
Be early. Arrive about two hours before high water. Most tailing tends to happen in the last hour of the flood and the first hour of the ebb, and in fall it can run longer. Watch the edge of the taller grass as the water comes in to see where fish filter onto the flat, and note the tide stage. Fish tend to repeat it.
Read before you cast. A fish with its tail up is busy and facing down. When the tail drops and a small wake turns, it is moving to the next crab. Pick an angle that lets you lay the line beside the fish rather than over it. Plair suggests leading a feeding fish by two to three feet and keeping the fly in five to eight inches of water, bumping it slowly along the bottom with short strips.
Manage the grass. Spartina grabs fly line, so keep the cast short enough to control. Once a fish is on, hold the rod high to keep the line up out of the grass.
Move instead of hammering. When a fish spooks or keeps refusing, reposition rather than reload. Rotate between flats, too. Plair warns that fishing the same flat every time wears it down.
For tackle, Florida Sportsman recommends an 8- or 9-weight rod with a floating line. Plair fishes a 7- to 9-foot fluorocarbon leader with a butt of about 20 pounds tapering to 12 to 16 pounds, shorter in wind and longer in calm, bright conditions.
The crab fly that belongs in the grass
On the flood, the exact pattern matters less than anglers expect. Plair calls fly selection “surprisingly unimportant.” The features matter more. A good flood-tide crab is about the size of the crabs on the flat. It carries enough weight to settle through a few inches of water and sit on the bottom, but not so much that it lands loudly or buries itself in soft mud. It has something that moves while it sits, such as legs or soft fibers. And in standing grass it needs protection from snags. Plair is emphatic on that point and ties his weed guards from stiff 50- to 60-pound fluorocarbon.
There are times a crab is the wrong call. Later in the tide, when fish stop tailing and start cruising the flooded grass, Plair finds they take shrimp and baitfish patterns readily.
Megafin’s Kung Fu Crab fits the crab side of that job. It is a tan, weighted crab with rubber legs, tied to land softly, on No. 1 and No. 4 hooks. As photographed it has no weed guard, so it fishes best dropped into the open pockets and edges where tails show, not dragged through standing grass. In thick spartina, a guarded fly is the better tool.
When the grass goes quiet
The end of the flood tides is not the end of Lowcountry redfish. SCDNR notes that winter fish still move with the tides, sluggish and more exposed to dolphins. Plair describes a different fishery from mid-December through March: schools of 20 to 200 redfish on low-tide mud flats, in the clearest water of the year, sometimes visible 50 to 100 yards away. The flies get smaller and more natural. Leaders get longer and lighter, around 9 to 11 feet and 10 to 12 pounds. The fishing moves to the two hours on either side of low tide. The grass that held tails in October becomes scenery.
Whatever the season, check the rules before you keep a fish. Since July 1, 2026, South Carolina allows one red drum per person per day, two per boat, between 18 and 25 inches. Georgia and Florida set their own limits. A fish going back should be unhooked in the water. The marsh deserves the same care as the fish: cross the grass as little as you can, and leave a flat alone once you have fished it hard.
Sometime this November, a tide will come up over the short grass and nothing will tip up in it. That is not the end of anything. The same fish will be down in the creek, then out on the low-water mud by January, packed together and waiting for a smaller fly and a quieter cast. The angler who notices the change gets both seasons.
