When autumn arrives, North Carolina’s coastal backwaters fill with baitfish.

Mullet are swimming everywhere, forming huge schools in grass beds and near creek mouths. As the shiny baitfish swim in massive abandon, gamefish crash this moveable feast, breaking the surface as they crush hapless baitfish leaping from the water while attempting to escape.

While fish mostly swim, anglers call this excessive display of nature’s abundance the mullet “run.” And they really are running — to escape the hungry jaws of speckled trout, red drum and flounder.

Anglers know this fact and look forward to the fall and early winter as perhaps the best time of year for inshore fishing — as long as the weather is warm and the mullet are running until the winter’s chilly weather forces them to warmer waters.

“There’s a school of mullet now,“ said Capt. Rick Patterson of Cape Crusader Charters. “There’s probably a puppy drum right behind them.”

Patterson cast a floating lure behind a school of mullet cruising near a grassy bank. He began retrieving the lure with a simultaneous reeling and twitching motion, which imparted a flip-flopping action. Most anglers call this type of lure retrieve the “walk-the-dog” approach.

But Patterson’s dog didn’t walk far. After a couple of twitches, an enormous hole opened in the salty marsh water, engulfing the topwater lure like a whirlpool.

His shout of “there he is!” wasn’t needed, as his fishing partner, Capt. Jeff Cronk of Fish'n 4-Life Guide Service, turned to watch the source of the commotion. Cronk smiled and gave encouragement to Patterson without missing a beat with his own walk-the-dog lure retrieve while Patterson made the hookup.

Soon a big red drum was tired and ready for the net. Scooped from the water, the big redfish lay on its side while Patterson held it securely against the soft boat seat. Using pliers to remove the treble hooks from the fish’s mouth, he protected his hands from the fairly good odds the fish would flop and flip a barb into his fingers.

“These fish are strong,“ he said. “You can’t take a chance on one of them throwing a treble hook into you, so you’d better use pliers to free the hooks. It’s also easier on the fish because you can work the hooks out quickly without tearing the fish’s lips.”

After the redfish was released unharmed, the two professional anglers and fishing buddies returned to their fishing. War stories of big fish tossing hooks into various parts of their own and guests’ anatomies, along with the misfired casts by excited clients who spotted surface feeding fish and got so confused they forgot someone else was within range of a back cast, filled the few minutes until the next strike.

Cronk soon boated a redfish nearly 30-inches long. Instead of the usual single-eye spot on either side of the fish’s caudal fin, this drum had seven spots on one side and six on the other dotting its tail and spread across its flanks.

“This is a pretty redfish,“ Cronk said. “Looking at the spots and memorizing the pattern might tell you whether you caught the same fish during a different day.

“Redfish are homebodies. As long as the weather stays steady, the fish don’t move far.”

“The waters around Swansboro are filled with big redfish,“ Patterson said. “I fish way up into Queen’s Creek, all over Bogue Sound and all along the islands and marshes on either side of the Intracoastal Waterway.

“The redfish might be anywhere. The key to finding them is to find bait and structure. Once you find those two elements, the redfish are going to be there. You might not be able to get them to bite, but they’re there.”

“We fish a lot of shallow areas where it can be hard to get into unless you know the water well,“ Cronk said. “Cow Channel, all around Hammocks Beach State Park, in West Channel and in Bear Creek there’s some excellent fishing.

“There are tons of little feeder creeks and coves in these places that hold plenty of redfish. Sometimes, you can just cruise the backwaters using your trolling motor until you spot fish.

“The best way to get to know the water is to check the places out at low tide to find channels then return at higher tides to fish. You also can follow the tide as it comes up, then work your way back out as it falls.”

When actually fishing the shallows, the best tactic is to fish the higher-tide stages. During rising tide, the fish congregate at the edges of grass beds. As the grass beds fill with water during the flood tide, the fish move into the grass and often can be seen disturbing the water or poking their dorsal and tail fins out of the water as they ambush and eat baitfish and crustaceans.

“When they get back in the grass, it can be hard to approach close enough to catch them,“ Patterson said. “We might get to see lots of tails when the tide’s high, especially during a lunar high tide. But we might not get a shot at many of them. And those you do get a chance at can hang you up in the grass.”

Indeed, one fish was hooked in the grass that carried the anglers on a merry chase. Despite following the hooked fish with a trolling motor and playing it with a tight drag setting, the big redfish swam into the grass, burying its head and snagging the treble hooks of a topwater lure.

Moving close with the trolling motor, Cronk tried to catch the fish in a landing net. But the fish fought with renewed vigor, tearing free of the hooks and leaving the lure stuck in the grass stems.

The two friends caught several fish with topwater lures cast near the edges of grass beds despite the high-tide stage. There were plenty of missed strikes, as so often occurs when working topwater lures in a walk-the-dog fashion. Some reds struck the lures again and again until they were hooked. Others simply gave up the chase after swatting at the lure and missing it the first time.

“These fish get educated,“ Cronk said. “The come back to the same places at the same tide stages day after day, so it pays to keep switching lures.

“If you’re using a walk-the-dog lure, you have to keep it coming. If you set the hook without feeling the fish, you’ll jerk it away from him, and he probably won’t follow it.

“It’s pretty nerve-wracking, but you have to keep the lure working all the way back to the boat. He might strike and miss it several times then finally get the hooks in his mouth right at the boat. It’s really a really exciting way of fishing.”

“We use some different lures when the fish are back deeper in the grass,“ Patterson said. “You might be able catch a puppy drum on any lure that resembles a mullet.”

Patterson was a professional bass fisherman before moving to the coast from Burlington. He quickly learned to apply what he had learned while bass fishing to saltwater environments. He fished bass tournaments at Falls, Harris and Jordan lakes — then he caught his first red drum at the coast. He said a red drum is bigger, stronger and pulls harder than a bass, so he was hooked just as well as the red. The biggest difference he’s found is red drum don’t jump as do largemouths.

“If you can cast it, it’ll catch a red drum,“ he said, referring to lures. “Sometimes we use live baits but only as a last resort. Anything that’ll catch a bass also will catch a red drum.

“I’d rather use a scented soft bait, such as a Berkley Gulp shrimp lure, than a live shrimp because you have to re-bait too often when you’re using the real thing.

“I like using buzzbaits when the fish are back in the grass. The lure rides on top of the grass and doesn’t hang up and really draws some aggressive strikes.”

Other lures Patterson employs include Redfish Magic spinnerbaits and Top Dog Zara Spook and Skitterwalk series topwater lures. He prefers lure colors that are orange, chartreuse or white.

For spinnerbaits, he likes gold-blade styles. He also uses shallow-running stickbaits, jerkbaits and bucktail jigs or lead-head jigs with soft-plastic trailers. He has used in-line spinnerbaits, such as the Terminator. But he prefers conventional spinnerbaits or topwater buzzbaits.

“I like the Strike King ¼-ounce buzzbait,“ he said. “I add a 3/0 trailer hook because with red drum you get so many short strikes. I put the hook eye of the trailer hook on the bend of the hook on the buzzbait and put on a piece of surgical tubing to hold it in place. Without the trailer hook, fishing a buzzbait can be very frustrating.”

Many of the marshes fish are only accessible during higher tide stages. The pair of anglers worked the grass beds and shoreline edges as the tide fell, catching an increasing number of fish.

“Once the tide begins to fall, the fish leave the grass and wait along the edges,“ Cronk said. “When the baitfish leave the grass, it’s feeding time for reds.”

Showering baitfish showed where the reds were feeding. Big wakes in the water or boils in the thinner grassy places at the shoreline indicated where redfish were ambushing baitfish. With the fish in the grass, the two guides used superbraid lines to prevent the possibility of cut-offs.

“I use 20-pound Power Pro line,“ Patterson said. “I tie on a 20-pound monofilament leader about 3- or 4-feet long. I check the leader constantly for frayed places and keep cutting it back. At the end of the day, the leader may only be 18-inches long, so I change it.”

For sight fishing for reds, polarized glasses are a necessity. Being able to see the fish underwater gives the angler a distinct advantage when the fish are in the shallows.

But as the tide goes out, the fish move to the deeper holes and channels of the ICW. When the tide is down, the best way to catch the fish is through experience.

“You might watch for baitfish schooling or for red drum wakes as they’re feeding,“ Patterson said. “But knowing where the flats are where the fish prefer to go during the lower tide stages is a hit or miss thing. You keep watching for signs of fish and fishing the deeper areas near the marshes where they feed during higher tide stages. They won’t go far as they wait for the tide to come back in.”

Patterson motored along the ICW within a couple of miles of the N.C. 58 Bridge to Emerald Isle from the mainland. Stopping at a nondescript patch of open water between several widely dispersed islands, he began casting a topwater lure. While his 22-foot Triton center-console boat is light enough and maneuverable enough to be handled with an electric trolling motor in the backwaters, it’s still seaworthy enough to handle the bigger waters of the open sound, the inlets and the ICW. He also covers a lot of water in a single day looking for redfish, so the boat is powered by a 200-horsepower V-Max Yamaha outboard motor.

He fishes for redfish the same way he fished for bass, by moving fast between likely areas to increase the amount of area he can cover. When one hole isn’t productive after a few casts, it doesn’t take him long to switch to another.

A group of anglers in a nearby boat celebrated as they played a hooked fish. A call on the VHF confirmed it was a redfish.

“This is a flat about 4-feet deep,“ Patterson said. “When it’s warm, redfish come here in small schools of up to a half dozen because the baitfish come here. As it cools off, they come to the flats to warm up in the reflected heat and can form schools of dozens or hundreds of fish.

“A spot like this is a gold mine for redfish. They’ll always be here at low tide.”