We were down with weather today, so a new fishing report made it on the docket. So here is a look back at how the fly fishing in Rockport, and surrounding waters, has been for the past little bit. And hopefully a look at what we are expecting in the coming weeks time.
Week one of Spring Break is in the books! Week two is going on now, although things are always a little more mellow for the second week. This kind of marks the beginning of the busiest time of year around here. Days are warmer, which brings out the weekend crowds a bit more. Spring Break enhances that a good bit for the first couple of weeks. Then you have the dreaded tournament season starting as well. Seemingly, there is some sort of stupid fishing tournament every weekend somewhere on the coast for the duration of the Summer. Yuck!!!
Last week wasn’t too bad along the coast. The weather cooperated, for the most part. We are still a little bit behind schedule as far as Spring weather. But the sun has been out a bit more lately and warming things up a bit. Just not quite where we might like to be for this late in March. But it’s getting better every day. Our daytime temps have been hanging around the low to mid 70’s most days. More importantly, the overnight temps have improved a good bit as well. We are kinda tired of wearing all that gear on the ride out in the mornings.
With the sun out every day lately, we are finally warming our water up. It too is still a bit behind schedule, but not bad. Most mornings you are seeing 60+ degrees throughout. By the afternoon, 65 degrees is pretty common on the flats. The fish are finally starting to play a little nicer because of it. It had been a pretty long stretch of cool days here, and we were tired of seeing sluggish fish.
Most mornings are starting out with smaller schools and tailing fish. Schools sizes are most commonly in the 5-10 fish range. But as many as 25 or so in the shallows are becoming more and more frequent. Tailing fish have been plentiful before the sun gets too high. Pairs or schools of 5 or so fish are most common right out of the gates. Then we are finding singles here and there in between. But plenty enough to get a good number of shots in during the lower light hours of morning.
If you want to get out of the crazy shallow and look a little deeper, like that 12-18 inches of water range, we are seeing tons of fish. While the water has been slow to warm up, and the tide pretty darn low for the past few weeks, there are big numbers of fish out just a touch deeper. If you have the light and conditions to see them, you can find big numbers of fish. Also lots of big, over slot fish. There are also really large schools of reds in these waters right now. 50-100 redfish is not that surprising. Or, even larger schools if you are willing to throw at black drum. They are cruising around throughout the zone as well, in all sizes. Schools of the very large drum are cruising around in deeper water or around deeper cuts most days.
The tides have been really low for the past month. Again, that is a big reason for so many fish hanging around in slightly deeper water. But as the winds finally started blowing from the right direction this past weekend, the water started pushing back into the bays. As of this morning, things looked pretty much normal around here. So we should have plenty of water to fish most anywhere for the foreseeable future. That warmer water coming in will encourage these fish to spread out a bit better and start filling in some of their favorite shallow spots for us. Way more fun than fishing in deeper water.
We have had a small number of fish crashing banks and eating on the surface. But nothing like you would hope by now. As we continue warming up, this will become common place and we will start tossing more topwater flies out there. But for now, we are still waiting for a bit more activity. This is all the normal Spring activity we are kind of expecting to start any day now.
As far as other flies we’ve been using… They are redfish. They will pretty much eat anything right now. Now that things are warming up, they are partying pretty well out there. So we say throw whatever. Although nothing too large still. They aren’t quite that stupid yet. But we’ve had them eat pretty much any color this week. Or damn near anything that moved. As always, many of our guides prefer black/purple type stuff. But we had them eat white, tan, brown, chartreuse and even some weird yellow/red thing that someone brought. But as things warm up, they will eventually begin to focus in on a few things here and there. Most likely when all the seagrasses brighten up a bit more. Then maybe we will have to get a little more crafty with our fly selection. But until then, you don’t need a different fly. You need a different fish!
Again, we were down with weather today. Tomorrow we have the back end of this storm blowing out of here. So we may not be able to get out tomorrow as well. But the rest of the week is looking great. We have a bunch of boats out every day this week and through the weekend to close out the Texas Spring Break season. Then things are pretty much full go for Spring fishing on the coast. So we have boats out every day from now on.
We will try to keep up to date on the Rockport fishing reports. But with the longer days, sometimes its straight to the golf course once off the water. Gotta get those swings in! But we do have a bunch of new stuff in the works over here that we hope to begin rolling out now that the weather is improving.
If you are looking to get out on the water, you can always contact us any time if you would like to BOOK A TRIP or need any up to the minute Southwest Texas fly fishing or Rockport fishing report type news. We continue to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other such stuff. Or perhaps SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel as well. We continually are trying to add more videos and stuff there. We try to keep stuff fresh for those of you that are wishing you were on the flats with us. So be sure to follow us on all our social media stuff. And don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter below.