Capt. Greg Hildreth shows off a red drum taken along the edge of the marsh grass. Photo by Capt. Spud Woodward.

Summertime is recognized as the high season for deep-sea fishing in coastal Georgia. Seas are usually calm, and schools of migratory game fish like king mackerel, amberjack and barracuda invade our offshore waters.

However, the months of July and August also offer great inshore fishing for species like redfish. Savvy anglers find these bronze brawlers ready, willing and able to bend a rod even during the hottest times of the year. Natural bait is abundant during the summer, and reds have a hard time passing up the local cuisine.

Compared to many other saltwater game fish, juvenile reds travel very little during the early years of life. Scientific tagging studies have supported many anglers' suspicions: Marked redfish are often captured within a mile of the release location, even after they've been at large for a couple of years. The good news is locations that produced redfish back in the autumn are just as likely to hold fish during the summer.

THE "DROP" ZONE
In the angling jargon of coastal Georgia, a prime fishing location is called a "drop" -- which, I suppose, refers to the simple act of dropping bait in the water, hoping that some cooperative fish will take the offering.

With over 3,400 miles of tidal shoreline, coastal Georgia has plenty of potential fishing drops: natural features such as the mouths of tidal creeks, oyster shell mounds, and the points of marsh islands, and artificial features such as boat wrecks, dock and bridge pilings, mounds of ballast stones, and rock jetties scattered throughout the Georgia coast. All of these have the potential to hold summertime redfish.

Capt. Greg Hildreth guides anglers to redfish, speckled trout, tripletail and other coastal Georgia favorites in the waters near his home in Brunswick. Over the course of a year, he fishes for reds from the uppermost waters in the St. Simons estuary all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean.

"During the summer, I concentrate my efforts in the lower part of the estuary, in an area we refer to as the sound," Hildreth said. "Dozens of creeks connect this large area of open water to the marsh. I look for reds at the mouths of these creeks and oyster shell mounds found just off the edge of the marsh grass."

Most anglers prefer to target reds on the last of the ebbing tide and the first couple of hours of the flooding tide, since the fish are concentrated, and the fish-holding structure is visible. Reds can often be seen in water so shallow that they create a visible wake when they chase prey. A shrimp skipping across the surface or a panicked mullet is also a good sign that redfish are in the vicinity.

When lurking in the shallows, reds are highly sensitive to boat noise. After a winter and spring spent avoiding ravenous bottlenose dolphins and hungry fish-eating birds, it's easy to understand why. They don't mind the sound of other fish feeding, but the splash of an anchor can ruin that spot for the rest of the tide.