Texas Gulf Coast Fishing Update: Early Winter Action and Top Spots

Artificial Lure here with your Texas Gulf Coast fishing rundown for the Gulf of Mexico side.

Along the mid and upper coast from Freeport to Galveston, we’re sitting in a classic early-winter pattern: cooler bays, light north to northeast breeze most of the day, and clear to partly cloudy skies with mild afternoon temps. Sunrise is right around seven in the morning, with sunset a little after five-thirty local time, so that first light wade and last light drift are your money windows.

Tides are running on the negative side in the mornings with a slow incoming through late morning and a stronger push into the evening, which really helps stack bait and gamefish on the edges of guts, bayou mouths, and along the ICW. On the beachfront side, that evening high gives you a nice green tide pushing into the first and second guts for surf casters.

Fish activity has picked up behind working birds in the bays, especially over mud and shell where the water’s got a little color. Trout and sand trout are schooling under gulls, with slot redfish mixed in when you see the heavier pushes of bait showering on the surface. Deeper channels and harbor basins are holding drum, sheepshead, and occasional mangrove snapper around structure as the water cools.

Recent catches up and down the coast have been solid on keeper speckled trout with a good mix of reds, plus scattered flounder near passes and drains. Night lights in canals and around dock lines are giving up decent numbers of smaller trout with a few keepers when the tide is moving. Offshore, when boats can run, folks are still boxing snapper and a few kings on the near rigs, but most action right now is bay and surf.

For lures, keep it simple and local:
- Soft plastic shrimp or paddle tails in natural or glow colors under a popping cork for trout and reds on the flats.
- Soft plastic shad or jerkbaits on 1/8 to 1/4 ounce jigheads for drifting shell and channel edges.
- Gold or silver spoons and small swimbaits for working along the beachfront and jetties.

Best natural baits are live shrimp, mud minnows, and finger mullet, either under a cork on the shallow stuff or Carolina-rigged on the deeper edges and around structure. Cut mullet or crab will pick up reds and drum when the bite gets finicky.

A couple of hot spots to circle today:
- Christmas Bay and the San Luis Pass area, drifting mud and shell where birds are working, then easing into bayou mouths as the tide turns.
- Packery Channel and the North Padre surf, keying on that evening high tide and any stretch of clean green water with nervous bait in the first gut.

That’s the scoop from the Gulf side of Texas. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next report. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

Great deals on fishing gear https://amzn.to/44gt1Pn

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI