Right now, somewhere between the RiverClub boardwalk and the mouth of Julington Creek, a school of redfish numbering in the thousands is pushing upriver against the current. Nobody put it on the community calendar. No email went out. It happens every year, on roughly the same schedule, and most people walking the boardwalk at 7 a.m. have no idea why three boats are sitting motionless near the same set of pilings they walked past yesterday.
The St. Johns River does this every autumn. Red drum, known locally as redfish, stage an annual spawning run that starts with smaller males in late August and builds through the fall as larger females join in, and the water that run passes through includes the same stretch RiverTown residents already use for kayaking, fishing, and sunset walks.
The Run Nobody Put on a Calendar
Redfish are catchable in Florida waters year round, but the fall run is a different event entirely. Smaller males start showing up first, typically in late August, and by the time the run is in full swing the schools have swelled into groups numbering in the thousands, surging upriver toward their spawning grounds and feeding heavily along the way. The run continues well into November, which means the neighborhood is only a few weeks into something that has another two months to run its course.
The fish are most active at dawn and dusk, which is exactly when the boardwalk tends to be quietest and the pier tends to fill up with people who know what they're looking for. Most of what gets caught during the run gets released. Florida law only allows anglers to keep one red drum between 18 and 27 inches per day, and during the peak of the run, most of the fish moving through are well outside that window. The economics of the encounter are almost entirely photographic. Someone hooks something close to 40 inches, fights it for a few minutes at the base of the pier, and lets it go.
Why This Stretch of the River Holds Fish
RiverTown sits on the St. Johns River, where tides influence how fish position themselves around docks, bridge pilings, and creek mouths. That's precisely the kind of structure redfish use to rest in current while feeding on whatever the tide carries past.
None of that is unique to RiverTown. What is specific to RiverTown is that a resident doesn't need a boat ramp or a truck with a trailer hitch to be standing on top of it. The RiverClub sits directly on the river with its own boardwalk running alongside the water to a fishing pier, and that pier puts anyone with a rod and a pass a few steps from water that's doing exactly what the biology says it should be doing this time of year.
A few things tend to give the run away to anyone paying attention along the boardwalk:
- Boats anchored and sitting still near the same pilings for long stretches, rather than moving and casting
- Activity concentrated tightly around dawn and again near dusk, with long quiet gaps in between
- Someone working cut bait or shrimp instead of casting artificial lures, since that's the standard approach for redfish in this stretch of river
- A fish breaking the surface hard enough to be visible from the boardwalk, then going quiet again as it's released
The Kayak Launch Runs on the Same Clock
RiverTown's kayak launch rents out during staffed hours, Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., at $10 per person for up to two hours, and kayaks have to be back a half hour before sunset. That return deadline isn't just a housekeeping detail. It means anyone renting a kayak late in the afternoon is paddling directly through the same dusk window when the redfish run tends to be most active, whether or not they're trying to see it.
It also means the run is visible to people who have no interest in fishing at all. A paddleboard trip timed for early evening puts a resident on the water at the exact hour the fish are working the banks, without a rod in hand or a plan to notice anything. The overlap isn't designed. It's just what happens when a residential amenity and a wild migration occupy the same stretch of tidal river at the same time of day.
Two More Months of This
What's moving through the water in late September looks different than what will be moving through by late October. The run starts with the smaller males, and the larger females follow in waves as the weeks go on, arriving already carrying roe and feeding aggressively as they push upriver. A angler or a paddler who's been watching the pier since late August is, without necessarily tracking it, watching the demographics of the run shift toward bigger fish as autumn goes on.
The run doesn't wrap up neatly. It continues well into November, tapering rather than ending on a fixed date, which means there isn't a single weekend to circle on the calendar. There's a two-month window, and right now the neighborhood is somewhere in the middle of it.
None of this shows up on a community events page because it isn't a community event. It's the river doing what it does every year, on a schedule set by water temperature and spawning biology rather than anything a homeowners association could program. The only thing that changes year to year is whether anyone standing on the boardwalk happens to notice.
If you're curious about more of what's actually happening along the water in Saint Johns County this season, Katie Kravtsov keeps an eye on the river as closely as she does the market, and she's always glad to talk about either one.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
