Oversize refish is revived and released.

Chris phoned me and three days later I joined him and Alexander City, Alabama businessman Rick Ayers at Panama City to see if we could do it again. Ayers invented a cylindrical closed-foam bumper pad for flats boat pushpoles so they wouldn’t beat the fiberglass to death when being trailered. Proceeds go to a terminally ill children’s support fund.

No rush to get fishing the day we were itching to get into them. No bull run action starts until the tide moves and that was scheduled for midday. Aboard Chris’ 22-foot inboard we got into the pass between jetties around 10 a.m. Others were there, too, milling around. But no bowed rods meant no action. You could separate the experienced bull fighters from the inexperienced simply by looking at their rods. Anglers who knew they had to get these fish in quickly or they would run themselves to death, all used medium-heavy boat rods, and drift fished, holding boats into the current with their motors. Inexperienced anglers fished with flimsy lightweight rods and their boats were firmly anchored.

Despite local TV stations urging anglers not to anchor in this busy seaway, several either hadn’t heard the requests or didn’t care. Usually these anglers were fishing long, whippy rods. With their anchor rodes stretched taut in these over-50-foot depths, the chance of big fish plowing under them and causing boat collisions was very high. In fact later we saw the consequences of such an accident with people off the stern of one boat using face masks and fins trying to untangle themselves from another boat’s anchor rode.

The drift procedure was to head to the seaward end of the west jetty. The fathometer told us we were at the edge of the ship channel with ledges starting in 30 feet of water and abruptly dropping straight off to 50 feet. Redfish stay on the top edge of these ledges or on the downcurrent side waiting for food to wash over on a moving tide. That’s where we started the drift. As the tide picked up a couple hours after we arrived we started getting into sow-size redfish action.

Our medium-heavy boat rods were loaded with 30-pound-test mono. On it sliding free was a 4-ounce barrel lead above a swivel. End tackle was a 3-foot, 50-pound fluorocarbon leader attached to a 5/0 circle bait hook.

The hand scale is bottomed out; may as well just guess at the weight.

Live lip-hooked pinfish was our preferred bait but others were using store-bought baitfish. Artificials are also popular but the bottom is littered with hangs that quickly snag those that get too close. For the last couple years 8-inch curly tail white grubs on a heavy jighead were effective. So were heavy squidding spoons. These are fished straight up and down, jigging to indicate a struggling baitfish fluttering up off the bottom. After having caught a number of reds I switched to a $6 squidding spoon. Once down I hooked an immovable object, which ended that. Next I sent down an 8-inch curlytail jig. One bite and the tail disappeared. I went back to live bait and no more nonsense. Menhaden, dead herring and cigar minnows are alternatives. People here call anything over 15 pounds a bull redfish. Before the tide picks up, these smaller reds are usually the first hitters. But quickly the big bulls muscle in on the action. As I pumped in a husky female I saw three similar-size bronze warriors rocket around her. When the fish really pack the pass some anglers switch to the heavy squidding spoons and don’t worry about waiting to reach bottom. Halfway there, jigging does the trick and you’re off to the races.

Most redfish over 30 inches long are believed to be females, and of course any over 27 inches must be released, per Florida fishing regulations. (An 18-inch minimum and 1-fish bag limit also apply.) When Tampa Bay ran a redfish stocking program they found that redfish less than 30 inches long stayed in a 5-square-mile area after birth. Once they got to 27 to 30 inches they migrated offshore and never returned except to the passes to spawn. The only exception we know to this is in the Indian River Lagoon, on Florida’s east coast. There, 30- to 40-pound redfish appear on those flats but this is something of a closed system with very little tidal movement in the lagoon.