Surf Surfside Friday

[karstopo]

Went to the pedestrian beach for a quickie. Got out a little after 2. Tossed a chrome skitter-walk. Wind was out of the southeast. Whitecaps. Nothing like the morning. Battled waves. Found a couple of 19" trout and lost one about the same size. Off the water before 4. One fish up in the first gut. The other later walking the second bar. A few fish popped my walk.

[karstopo]

[CptSavAMullet]

Nice Trout

[karstopo]

I moved around a bit. Lots of swimmers (people). Some guys had kayaked out a bait way out before the wind got up. Tossed my walk over the line (whoops) I never even noticed they had a line out. No harm, no foul. Visited with them. They had a line out about 300 yards. Nada. Said they saw some people catching pompanos on the jetty. Water had been calm, but the waves got up in the afternoon. Water was streaky. Clear then sandy. Had 4 fish on, three landed. One about 15" a few popped my walk. One lure tried.

[frankie14]

Has the seaweed cleared out of the water? Note that I said "water" and not "beach"...

Thanks for the report

[maskale]

Frankie I was at Brian beach yesterday. The water was nearly clear of sea weed. A small patch would be seen once in a while in the surf, small being about half the size of a sheet of paper. Certainly fishable.

[therocket37]

I'm very experienced surf fishing but I was out there on surfside Saturday afternoon for a little bit and it was pretty rough out there. I had a very hard time once I got into the 1st gut, did you basically swim out to the sandbar to be able to cast into the 2nd gut? The tide had been outgoing for a little bit too... I guess it was just rough.

[therocket37]

***INexperienced lol sorry

[karstopo]

***INexperienced lol sorry

The surf can rough up quickly. It had been pretty calm, according to some guys fishing early, but by the time I got out Friday afternoon the wind had picked up and the surf was becoming sandier and rougher as I fished. I'm sure by Saturday, it was difficult to fish at all. It gets so rough that you can't stand comfortably on any bar and the water and waves make it nearly impossible to fish.

Surf cameras help and there are several feeds out there. I will take a look at those and look at the wind from the NOAA sites and try to make a decision based on that information. I've loaded up the kayak before and if the surf is too rough I'll make a trip to a nearby marsh or bay.

I don't swim out to the third bar any more. So if the water gets over chest deep, I head in. I fish the first gut, second bar ( first bar being the beach itself) second bar and second gut. I really enjoy fishing the first gut. I find a lot of fish standing on the second bar just offshore of the breaking surf casting almost parallel to the second bar. If the water levels are such that the second bar is pretty shallow and the waves breaking there lose a lot of their energy and the first gut is thigh deep or so, trout will hang out just inside the second bar in the first gut.

I move around a lot. I love Bryan beach because the bars and guts angle into the beach as you move towards the mouth of the brazos. But if the brazos is muddy, I stay away. I like the pedestrian beach at Surfside because the first gut is very pronounced and deep. Otherwise, I drive the beach and watch the bait and look for rip currents and good looking guts. I'll pick up and move around 3 or 4 times unless I'm just killing it in a spot. The other day, I ran chasing birds that we're following shad being creamed by trout and possibly other predators. I had just hooked and lost a good trout under the birds.

If you come from very far, have a back up plan because the surf will not always be fishable.

[karstopo]

Example of NOAA site, from Freeport coast guard station. Looking at 14 kts gusting to 17kts rules out the surf for me tomorrow in the am. I'll look at the Galveston jetty too just to confirm. It's going to have to be a little closer to 10kts. Before I'd consider going to the surf to wade fish. See, one can be a nerd and fish. There is all kinds of data out there to mess with. But when those numbers drop below 10kts out of 100-180 degrees and stay there for hours, I'm really thinking about how I can get to the beach.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

This is a great post! Thanks for sharing the info. Been trying to find some trout in the surf as well.

[Finfisher2]

Good looking trout.
How was the quickie