Redfish are the usual customers with doubles not uncommon.

A launch site often overlooked is at Faver-Dykes State Park near the intersection of U.S. 1 with Interstate 95. The park has a paved boat ramp and offers excellent access to both Pellicer Creek, a long and scenic coastal creek and Pellicer Flats. The flats are about a mile to your east (left) as you launch and an outgoing tide makes them easy to reach. If you wish, you can call ahead and reserve a canoe at the park. On a low tide, the flats are quite shallow, less than a foot deep, and the bottom is covered with oysters. This is a great place for redfish and flounder, but go slow and save your lower unit if you are in a johnboat or flats boat. Along the way, oyster bars reach out into the creek like fingers on a hand. Redfish and flounder feed at the end of these bars, usually facing into the flowing water. I’ve also caught some hefty-size trout at the ends of these bars.

If you go west and up the creek from the state park, the water gets deeper and sweeter. This is where trout and snook like to snowbird for the winter. Slow your subsurface retrieves during colder weather. Don’t overlook the cuts and canals flowing through the marsh and into the creek, especially on an outgoing tide. They harbor fish waiting for an easy meal. If the wind’s honking, the many twists and turns you will find on the creek offer a place to seek refuge and still catch fish.

A coastal marsh such as the one near Matanzas Inlet, with its grasses, creeks and flats, is a complex ecosystem. Being near the inlet and getting flushed twice daily with rising and falling tides, it is even more so. But that complexity is also what allows it to be so diverse and offer so many different habitats to a variety of fish. There is something here during all seasons of the year for fly fishermen as well as those who use spinning and baitcasting gear. When you move with the tides here, you’ll find an arm-long list of predator fish ready to rumble in the marsh madness.