How long will the outstanding fall fishing last? Let’s hope it remains with us for a good while. The weather will be the key. It likely will take a few major cold fronts to change our fishing patterns, and when that happens, we will be looking at our winter fishing season.
The flounder run will start to fizzle when the marshes are drained by several cold snaps, and the food fish are driven to deep water. Trout fishing should get even better at that point, and reds will be along with them.
Offshore, most of the popular fish will have moved out, and the big wintertime species, red snapper, is off limits to sports fishermen in federal waters.
Now, let’s make the most out of this peak fishing time and check on who has been catching what and where.
Saturday, Mark McDavid fished Offatts Bayou and landed 40 Gulf and sand trout. Three keeper black drum and a speckled trout rounded out his morning of fishing.
Clarence Mosley and his daughter, Chasidy, fished the Moses Lake area and caught a bull red and black drum using dead shrimp for bait.
The leeward shorelines of upper Galveston Bay have been productive for Capt. Michael LaRue, LaRue’s Guide Service.
Thursday, LaRue hosted the Mark Powell party and found full limits of trout for the group of four. The action came while fishing over scattered shell in 4 feet of water. Goobers in Saturday Night Fever color on quarter-ounce jigs were the baits.
Friday, LaRue hosted Ben Faulk’s party of three and used Strike Pro lipless crank baits and lemon drop Goobers to limit out his guests on trout by 11 a.m.
This time, they found birds working in the bay and caught about one-third of the fish around the sea gulls.
Thursday, Capt. James Plaag, Silver King Adventures, found hot action in upper Galveston Bay for the Tom Cerviono party of three.
Drift-fishing in 9 feet of water around color changes, they had their 30-trout limit by 9:30 a.m. and caught and released another 30 trout after that. The baits that worked were 10W40 Sea Shad Bass Assassins.
Friday, East Bay was where the action took place for Plaag and his guests, Mark and Glen Lively.
Working scattered birds over shell, they caught two limits of trout, five reds and a flounder. The same baits used Thursday worked again Friday.
Plaag’s last comment was “If you can’t catch fish now, you’ll never catch fish.”
Capt. Paul Stanton, Aqua Safari Charters, found Friday to be a beautiful day with calm seas when he took the Ryan Mossman party of four offshore.
Fishing 30 miles out, Mossman, along with Chris Bridgford, Ron Fulenchek and John Boley, caught and released 40 bull reds to 42 inches, 63 red snapper to 29 inches, two triggerfish, three blacktip sharks and a 35-pound jackfish. The only fish retained was a Spanish mackerel.
Spanish sardines were the bait, and Ronnie Cline was the first mate.
To get your catch in the Reel Report, phone Capt. Joe Kent at 409-683-5273, or send an e-mail to reel.report(at)galvnews.com. There’s no charge for this service.
