Flagler County Fishing Report – November 2023
November Fishing Report brought to you by Chris
with Skinny Water Lures.
October started off the month with a Waning Gibbous moon phase which is 93 percent full. This allowed those predatory fish to feed tremendously a couple days leading up to Sunday and a couple days after Sunday. This moon phase also allowed these fish to feed longer throughout the night.
The late night trout and snook bite was going off under the dock lights and around the Palm Coast bridges. We found throwing a paddle tail style lure or an artificial shrimp style lure under a popping cork around these areas at night got the job done.
Good numbers of flounder were caught the beginning of the month on the incoming tide around creek mouths and thinned out grassy areas. We found downsizing the paddle tail to a 2.5 inch paddle tail with a very slow retrieve barely off the bottom had the fatties chewing. We were finding 2-5 flounder in the same area at times, so don’t rush to move spots after hooking into a flounder. More than likely there will be more lying around.
Early in the month, in the days leading up into the first Sunday, we were catching up to 15-20 reds per day. These reds were being caught on everything from 4 inch to 2.5 inch paddle tails and topwater plugs. We are starting to notice larger schools coming together hanging around the thinned out grass flats early and mid morning.
Due to the excessive rainfall and super high tides a lot of these reds were found pushed back into those areas of flooded grass flats. We noticed a lot of these reds that were pushed back into the flooded grass were feeding on bugs on top of the water. We switched lures to a SWL creature style fineness bait that’s weedless and threw into the grass. The redfish would ambush these lures from under the grass, kind of like retrieving an artificial bass frog across Lilly pads.
Mid-October the weather started to cool off, helping to lower the water temperatures. There was still an abundance of bait fish hanging around the flats. Due to the abundance of rain in mid-October, the tides were still super high. Morning topwater bite was starting to slow for redfish, but multiple trout and snook were caught early morning in the long creek area on topwater.
Very good numbers of redfish were caught on incoming and outgoing tide using a paddle tail lure close to the bottom. It was noticed that paddle tails with chartreuse tails were a preferred choice for redfish around this time. Due to the flood tides, multiple redfish were also caught cruising through or along the grass banks. Focus your cast parallel to the banks and you will be sure to get a bite.