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June on the Texas Coast
No doubt about it; June is an awesome for saltwater fishing in Texas.
Hardcore grinder-types may disagree, preferring instead the cooler months for inshore trophy hunting, but if you consider everything June has going for it I'll be willing to bet this month might end up topping your list too. Everything from bank fishing to billfish comes into play.
The fishing forecasts from our guides and other writers are the most encouraging I can recall since we began publishing. There are some trouble spots; Baffin has a disappointing brown tide and specks have been somewhat on the slow side in a couple of the middle coast bays. I cannot help but believe a few tropical systems parking over these regions will make all the difference in the world. And if you give that Baffin situation a bit of thought, it is not all doom and gloom. Rather than moan about how bad it is I prefer to look forward to how great it is going to be when the water clears and it always does eventually. Consider the number of potential state-record specks lying unmolested in that brown soup getting bigger and fatter by the day.
When longtime upper-coast guides tell you they cannot recall anything that rivals current patterns you really need to take note, and maybe head that way to get in on the action. Dickie Colburn has been guiding on Sabine Lake 30-something years and in his words, "I know this is going out on a limb... but I do not believe there is a hotter body of water on the Texas coast right now than Sabine Lake!" Capt. Mickey Eastman's comments on the quality of opportunity all across the Galveston system are similarly glowing although that system has been held back a bit by this spring's late-arriving northers.
Dickie went out on a limb and I'm going to do the same right here and credit the series of tropical storms and hurricanes that slammed our upper coast between 2005 and 2008. Ditto the incredible run of inshore fishing, especially the trout rebound, that started in the Lower Laguna Madre with Dolly in 2008. I think you can narrow it down to the magic of freshwater. More on the Lower Laguna; when the seagrass beds between the Arroyo and the Landcut recover to their pre-summer 2010 levels, Port Mansfield is going to bust again at the seams. That's my prediction.
I'm also personally excited to see the kings, bonito and tarpon tearing up the jetties and surf regions. Nothing beats tangling with these migrants when the summer weather flattens the nearshore Gulf.
I also want to mention the CCA Texas STAR Tourney that gets underway Memorial Day weekend. This event is the best of its kind and continues to enroll new CCA members each year a powerful boost to insuring this organization will continue its phenomenal list of conservation activities and projects so vitally necessary to the future of our great pastime. Sign up today; a summer trophy could land you an incredible prize, maybe a scholarship for one of your children.
Take a kid fishing!
Hardcore grinder-types may disagree, preferring instead the cooler months for inshore trophy hunting, but if you consider everything June has going for it I'll be willing to bet this month might end up topping your list too. Everything from bank fishing to billfish comes into play.
The fishing forecasts from our guides and other writers are the most encouraging I can recall since we began publishing. There are some trouble spots; Baffin has a disappointing brown tide and specks have been somewhat on the slow side in a couple of the middle coast bays. I cannot help but believe a few tropical systems parking over these regions will make all the difference in the world. And if you give that Baffin situation a bit of thought, it is not all doom and gloom. Rather than moan about how bad it is I prefer to look forward to how great it is going to be when the water clears and it always does eventually. Consider the number of potential state-record specks lying unmolested in that brown soup getting bigger and fatter by the day.
When longtime upper-coast guides tell you they cannot recall anything that rivals current patterns you really need to take note, and maybe head that way to get in on the action. Dickie Colburn has been guiding on Sabine Lake 30-something years and in his words, "I know this is going out on a limb... but I do not believe there is a hotter body of water on the Texas coast right now than Sabine Lake!" Capt. Mickey Eastman's comments on the quality of opportunity all across the Galveston system are similarly glowing although that system has been held back a bit by this spring's late-arriving northers.
Dickie went out on a limb and I'm going to do the same right here and credit the series of tropical storms and hurricanes that slammed our upper coast between 2005 and 2008. Ditto the incredible run of inshore fishing, especially the trout rebound, that started in the Lower Laguna Madre with Dolly in 2008. I think you can narrow it down to the magic of freshwater. More on the Lower Laguna; when the seagrass beds between the Arroyo and the Landcut recover to their pre-summer 2010 levels, Port Mansfield is going to bust again at the seams. That's my prediction.
I'm also personally excited to see the kings, bonito and tarpon tearing up the jetties and surf regions. Nothing beats tangling with these migrants when the summer weather flattens the nearshore Gulf.
I also want to mention the CCA Texas STAR Tourney that gets underway Memorial Day weekend. This event is the best of its kind and continues to enroll new CCA members each year a powerful boost to insuring this organization will continue its phenomenal list of conservation activities and projects so vitally necessary to the future of our great pastime. Sign up today; a summer trophy could land you an incredible prize, maybe a scholarship for one of your children.
Take a kid fishing!