Corpusfishing.com

[mleofric]

Came down the last week of September to surf fish the Texas gulf coast with my son who's stationed in San Antonio. We had planned to fish PINS for the week but, sadly, the red tide changed that. My son suggested we try Matagorda beach. It is a little further away, was unknown to him and of course with me being from Virginia I had no clue either. It was a great choice though!

We got there on a Friday afternoon bought a pound of shrimp for bait and hit the beach. My son used his cast net and got all the mullet we needed. Tons of bait in the water. Water was very dirty and fairly calm. My Outer Banks experience was telling me that water this dirty is not very conducive to catching fish. Wrong! Less than an hour into it my son gets a 41" bull red. Around 1 AM that night we both hooked up, and landed, a couple bull reds at the same time but the mosquito's were killing us. We had to call it a night. That first day we landed 9 reds, 6 bulls and 3 slots.

And so went the week. We'd hit the beach late morning or early afternoon and fish into the night until we got tired. Didn't get 9 a day like the first but steady. The total for us was 26 reds, 19 bulls up to 44" and 7 slots. Conservatively, 75+ Gaff head catfish, a few trout up to 25", black tip sharks up to 48", a couple rays, and a mix of other fish.

We released all of what we caught except for one 28" red that, unfortunately, was gut hooked and pretty much DOA by the time I got him in. My son has already blackened and eaten him.

Next time we will be better prepared, clothing wise, for the bugs (biting black flies by day and mosquitoes at night). We were using a can of bug spray a day. Even got a bottle of 100% deet which worked fine until you had to get your hands or feet wet. Once it was off the bugs were on!

I've fished the Outer Banks for close to 30 years and never, ever, had a trip like this. For this trip I shipped down some of my rods and reels along with all of my tackle boxes. With that being said, I told my son to keep the gear. My annual fishing trips will be to Texas for the foreseeable future. Next year we hope to try PINS. The nice thing is that it sounds like the big bull red runs are later than when we were there. Unreal!

Sorry no pics to post...don't have any loaded onto the web.

Mike from Chester, Va.

[Tyler]

LOL Mike THAT is Matagorda. Water dirty but fishy as hell at least for reds and bull reds and sharks.

I enjoyed the report as I know all about what the fishing is like there. We used to spend a lot of time at the late Flakman's camp on the way to the beach. Of all of the times I have gone there I think I have seen the water green once.
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