10 Best Redfish Baits & Lures Right Now

A plethora of delicious entrees a redfish can’t resist.

Perhaps the most accommodating of inshore gamefish, red drum can be caught in just any way imaginable in Florida. A red will rise up and not so gracefully smack a topwater plug in shallow water, and is just as happy to inhale a chunk of ladyfish rigged with an egg sinker on the bottom of a channel. And there are time-tested places where anglers armed with the top lures, flies and bait can bet on redfish success. And we are talking a varied menu. Maybe the question should be: What wont a redfish eat?

Reds anywhere from rat to bull status are encountered in Florida waters of all kinds. Grassflats, oyster bars, mangrove shorelines, inlets and passes, sandy beaches, under docks and bridges, you name it. You find them where the food is, basically. Though ideally built for bottom-feeding and grubbing, a red often takes prey such as baitfish, and swimming crabs and shrimp, in the middle of the water column and even at the surface despite its underslung, inferior mouth.

There is no one best redfish bait or lure. There are a bunch of bests! But here are my Top Ten that get the job done just about anywhere you run into a red.

1) Shrimp

A live shrimp under a popping cork was central to my boyhood redfish indoctrination, and the place was Everglades City in the Ten Thousand Islands. Tossed under a mangrove creek shoreline, redfish rally for shrimp, when not beaten to the punch by mangrove s....