Saltwater trolling motors really help anglers get close to the fish quietly. My Minn-Kota Riptide trolling motor allows me to work a stretch of shoreline with minimal disturbance, putting me in casting range of fish that would spook at the sound of an outboard engine. When I find a concentration of fish, I simply ease the anchor into the water and work the spot until it no longer produces.

Coastal Georgia has the highest tidal range of any area in the southeastern United States -- 6 to 9 feet, twice a day. The greater the difference between low and high tide, the more likely coastal waters will be turbid. Fortunately, redfish's keen senses of smell and taste enable them to feed effectively even in murky waters. So don't be turned off just because the water clarity isn't up to standards for speckled trout fishing. Best of all, when the tide rises over 7 feet, redfish push into the flooded marsh grass, offering a sight-fishing opportunity as exciting as anything in the angling world.

"During the winter, I target large schools of reds on the mudflats," Hildreth said. "These schools break up in the spring, and reds go back to feeding on the flooded marsh. By July, flooded-marsh fishing is going full speed. I put one or two anglers in my flats skiff and pole quietly into the grass as soon as the boat will float. It's not uncommon to see dozens of tailing reds, and to have shots at half of what we see. The fish average over 20 inches, so they're a blast on light tackle or fly rod."

It takes a combination of fish sense and experience to separate the scenery from the productive fishing spots. Fortunately, you can take a shortcut to some of this local knowledge: The University of Georgia Marine Extension Service has produced a series of five fishing charts that pinpoint the location of productive fishing areas in all the coastal counties.

FEED ME!
Get a bunch of fish biologists together and you'll hear someone say "opportunistic omnivore" when the discussion turns to redfish feeding habits. Redfish will consume just about anything that its olfactory senses recognize as food. Diet studies of juvenile redfish show that marsh crabs top the list of reds' stomach contents, but shrimp, several species of fish, and a smorgasbord of other animal life have also been found in the digestive tract of reds. Recently, a photo of a small, rat-like nutria removed from a redfish caught in Mississippi made the rounds on e-mail, and I've personally seen sand dollars in the stomach of a redfish caught from a barrier-island sandbar.

While it might seem as if you could catch a redfish on a sock dipped in sardine oil, veteran anglers will tell you that it just ain't that simple. Redfish, like all other fish, can be painfully discriminating at times, turning their copper-colored noses up at the tastiest morsel. Yet when compared to most of their kin, reds can be taken on a variety of natural baits -- provided they're rigged correctly and fished in productive areas.