David Woods is a South Padre Island fishing guide with over 20 years of experience. He is the author of three books offering expert fishing advice.
Sheepshead fishing was as good as it gets the last couple of days. With low pressure bearing down on us, spring migration and spawn is on full blast with the thrusters. Just like a rocket ship or a freight train, everything happens all at once and then it’s silent for a time after it passes. So get out there and catch a few while the catching is good. The forecast has a good amount of rain hitting us mid-week which will switch things up and move the fish if we get as much as is forecast. Rain is good news though, because we are too dry right now. I can see the soil pulling away from the foundations on houses in my neighborhood.
The rain will only put the fishing off for a couple of days, but then the flats should get really good after that. The sheepshead do not waste any time after they are done congregating at the jetties. They move inshore with the tides and their population distributes into the bay fairly evenly. For most of the rest of the year sheepshead are mostly in small groups, with the largest individuals even being solitary fish. They work shoreline and potholes for crabs and shrimp, so remaining in large schools offers no food advantage in the shallow water.
Dedicated sheepshead anglers can find them on flats and around pilings, or in the backs of creeks where fresh water drains in from the saw grass.
For the remainder of the summer, sheepshead are a little tougher to catch, but available nearly everywhere. For trout fishing, the wet forecast is great news. Speckled trout need the fresh water for good recruitment of their fry in the springtime. Specks are broadcast spawners and if the bay water is too salty, the eggs float and don’t hatch well. The Lower Laguna Madre doesn’t have any major rivers supplying it with freshwater due to the water of the Rio Grande being channelized. So rain is great news, even if it might mean a few mosquitoes, the thought of which makes me shudder. Trophy trout fishing is what makes the Lower Laguna a uniquely world-class fishing destination. The Lower Laguna Madre likely produces more trout over 30” than anywhere else.
Spring shark fishing has also been on fire as they never miss a sheepshead party neither. Sandbar sharks seem to even prefer sheepshead to other bait offerings. I can’t that I can blame them either. Sheepshead fillets are white and flakey with a mild sweetness that I have always attributed to their diet that is so rich in shellfish. This is more pronounced in some fish than others. Some sheepshead taste more like crab or lobster than others. In spite of their large size and proximity to swimmers, the sandbar shark is one of the least dangerous large coastal sharks to humans and pose little threat to spring break swimmers. Unlike bull sharks or tigers which prefer warmer conditions, sandbar sharks have rarely been implicated in bites either in aquarium situations or in the wild.
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