Too much water to cover? Look for a funnel!

 

Think of a funnel as the middle part of an hourglass that fish transition through between their spots on high or low tide on each side. Funnels can be great places to target on extremely high tides when the whole marsh is flooded.

 

First, to understand a funnel we must understand bait movement. Bait’s focus is to not be eaten and one way to avoid this is to push up into the grass and back parts of creeks as the tide rises to stay in cover. Predators know this and will follow them along their journey through the tide cycle.

 

The goal is to set up in the funnel before the bait and fish begin moving through.

 

Below is an example we will look at (consider the tide high and just beginning to go out):

 

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Redfish will begin leaving flooded marsh as soon as they begin to feel the tide change. The aim is to be set up in the creeks they utilize for travel before they begin moving through them.

 

Here we will want to be in the blue location as the tide changes as this will be the first funnel the fish pass through as the water recedes. The fish will use the smaller channels to work through and we can put ourselves in a high probability spot by being at their confluence as they drain out.

 

Once the tide has dropped some and the majority of fish have left the flats, we start looking for a deeper funnel that they will pass through to leave the shallow creeks and head back towards deeper water closer to/in the main river. This leads us to the red location where we have deeper creeks coming together.

 

Finally, if the creek is shallow enough we can target it’s mouth back into the main body of water.

 

To find success on the incoming we can use this same strategy, just in reverse.