David Wood is a South Padre Island fishing guide with over 20 years of experience. He is the author of three books offering expert fishing advice.
If you were anything like me this week, the unusually high tides had you thrown slightly off. With so much water in the bay and on the beach, my normal game plan was out the window before I ever cast off. I began fishing yesterday by looking for some redfish to sight-cast to. My hopes were not especially high. I found them, but only by pushing them around. The redfish were inactive, just sitting around in the mud. As exciting as sight-casting reds can be, it is an absolute drag when they do not
want to participate. I turned around and moved out deeper after some trout. They were feeding a little better, but after catching a few lower slot fish, I decided there were probably still greener horizons across the way somewhere.
I wasn’t about to give up. We were hungry for some fish by then.
I moved us over to some structure, fishing the incoming in the afternoon, which turned out to be the trick. We started catching some nice and fat 12” Grey Snapper, also known colloquially as mangrove, or mango, snapper. Structure on an incoming tide is always a pretty good bet for snapper as the incoming water exposes food, rather than leaving it high and dry on the piling and rocks. The afternoon wind seemed to help too, chopping the water just enough so the fish weren’t so wary. Mangrove
snapper are notoriously hook shy.
As for regularly available inshore fish, mangroves are the finest eating. Properly prepared and cooked, they taste as good as offshore red snapper caught off the reefs.
After keeping a handful of fish, we went to the kitchen to cook them up. A quick pro tip: use iced brine water to wash your filets off. A little chemistry magic happens – the salt in the brine prevents the fish filets from soaking up too much water as you wash them off. Osmosis dictates that the fish filets soak in salt from the brine rather than the water. Water-logged fish filets do not cook up and taste the way you’d want them to.
The best tide this week has been the outgoing at around 3 a.m. when most normal people are hard asleep. I woke up once around that time to find feeding fish, but I just watched them. Half-asleep before my coffee, I am just not all that mad at them.
At least not enough to do anything about it. I looked up into the sky to see a half-moon. I don’t guess I have ever heard anyone say you need to go fishing when the moon is half full. Fishing improves around the quarters as the moon gets more in line with the Sun and Earth, when the tides are the strongest. Fishing should be pretty decent when this water dumps out. Whenever exactly that will happen is unclear. Tropical storm Sara is forecast to form and push into the Southern Gulf.
Good luck out there, folks!