Water Depth: Shoreline edges from 3 to 10 feet with mud and scattered shell and other bottom structure
Best Bite: 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Tide: Strong outgoing (PM)
Bait: Gulp Mantis Shrimp on 1/4 oz jighead; finger mullet on carolina rig
I have been watching the water clarity slowly improve in Galveston Harbor over the past few weeks and this past weekend was the first time I fished the channel since the flood. Tide was very weak in the mornings and I didn't even bother fishing early. Struggled to castnet some mullet but ended up finding some small schools and caught a couple dozen. Fished from about 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
Hit up several popular flounder holes and all of the areas had at least a couple fish staging. Two spots were holding quite a few fish and almost all keeper-sized with a few big ones mixed in.
I anchored about casting distance from shorelines with a variety of submerged and emergent structure that offered plenty of ambush points to fish around.
The bite turned on during the outgoing tide. Fish were feeding on all parts of the bank slopes/dropoffs. Smaller fish were mostly way up shallow against bulkheads and the bigger fish were further down the bank slopes just before the main dropoffs to channel bottom. The deepest I was catching fish was about 12 feet where the bottom turned to really soft mud.
Gulps were used in shallower areas with a lot of bottom structure. Live mullet was used in deepers dropoffs and shoreline edges.
Ended up landing 20 keeper-sized flounder over the weekend with several fish weighing 3 to 6 lbs. Kept the first five caught on Saturday. Caught and released about 15 fish on Sunday, mostly solid fish.
Highlights of the trips:
