Not necessarily GB...for instance, where I was this evening there wasn't a river or creek for miles, just a nice gradually sloping beach...as for the "hunting" part...what I mean is scanning the water up and down the beaches...those cutties will show themselves. Either you will see fry boiling and jumping out of the water, or more likely you will see larger slashing boils where the cutts are actually smashing bait near the surface...this almost always happens close to shore, within casting distance...
Those fish truly are "sea run" fish, they don't just venture out of a creek for a while, they spend many months or more out in the ocean, and then return to the creeks to spawn...so you don't really have to have any creeks nearby to find them...
I've also noticed it seems to be best to look for them on the high tide...although I do find some on the low tide as well, I'm beginning to get the idea from my successes and failures, that the high tide is best...
As for how much walking...sometimes a mile or two, sometimes you rarely have to move more than 20-40 feet...
It can be tough fishing too gb, today I fished for about 3 hrs after work, and only got 2, and that was in a span of 15-20 mins...the rest of the time I stood there waiting for them to show themselves...sometimes you get none, while somedays are fantastic and you find them regularly with brief intervals of lesser activity...
Hope that helps...
:cheers:
rib