December SnapPINS

[YakMack]

Was curious if the waters were warm enough to keep some Smacks and Kings in Texas waters this late in the year so we headed out to PINS for some fishing.

Day 1 Offshore waters too rough on Thursday so we hit up Baffin in the Jon boat. After a late start and a rampside carb cleaning, we got our hooks wet for about 4 hours of fishing. Landed a few Specks and a keeper Red, enough to fill a couple HEB soft tortillas with some Wow Wee dipping sauce back at the Air BnB in Corpus.

Day 2 had the offshore waters looking better, but still a bit too much since we still had Saturday's forecast to look forward to. So we checked out the PM Jetties and got the hooks wet for an hour or so and then headed across Yarborough to Laguna Madre on the kayaks. We found the ledges where the Specks were biting and brought home a couple for the skillet.

Day 3 – Waters calmed down and looked great and was 65 degrees at the shore. Warmed up to 67 at the target area. Ice cream conditions. Launched around 830am. As I came upon the target area the reel started buzzing – fish on! Wait…..fish off. Drag was too loose and couldn’t sink into the fish’s mouth maybe? I trolled around for a bit but nothing else. So we did some bottom dropping at the rocks while drifting and found a variety of fish, but mostly hardheads. We decided to anchor after pulling in a keeper Red Snapper and….JACKPOT. We found the Red Snapper – good size, too, for state waters. Longest was probably 20”. While jigging and bait soaking we pulled in some triggerfish, a spanish mackerel (still around), a couple toadfish, an unknown fish that looked like a light gray snapper, and some sand trout . Heckuva day.

I dropped the GoPro down a few times to see what was down there, which all but confirmed some signatures in the fish finder. The reef animals looked pretty neat too.
Merry Christmas! Cheers to 2020.

[YakMack]

More Pics.

[Volkswatson]

That's awesome. I wondered if anyone ever went out in December. Weather always seems really iffy.

Sounds like you had a good trip. What was the air temp? I've been getting stir crazy but local water is pretty dang chilly.

[Prof. Salt]

Ben, we've been out every month of the year, and snapper don't seem to leave unless there is a super cold spell. Even then they don't stay deep for long and come back to the relatively shallow structures. I like lures this time of year to avoid the hard heads and some of the other less desirable fish.

[Getz-Some55]

Great report; thanks for sharing! I think that's a big pigfish that you're holding. Awesome photos as well.

[Ron Mc]

that's a mess of food - great outing and excellent report

[YakMack]

That's awesome. I wondered if anyone ever went out in December. Weather always seems really iffy.

Sounds like you had a good trip. What was the air temp? I've been getting stir crazy but local water is pretty dang chilly.

Air temperature was 75 on Saturday. Thurs-Friday (12-14 Dec) was fantastic air temps. I turtled in Nov when I went and it was 71 degrees in the water. 65 in the water isn't too bad, but I managed to say in the kayak this time. I reckon there's a reason there are so many wind turbines in that area, yeah????

[DumpTruck]

Nice winter fish! Good job!