Ken+ wrote:Hey Seaborn,
I'm visiting Houston, TX at the end for June for 3 days (June 22-24). I would like to spend one day fishing the Gulf waters in Galveston from either the pier or from the beach.
I know BHP is in Corpus Christie and the fishing may be different from Galveston, but I'm sure some of the rigs and techniques are similar.
Can we chat a bit about that? I'm hoping to catch some spanish mackerel, pompano and pup sharks (blacktip, sandbar, Atlantic sharpnose and bonnethead). Not going to try for the big sharks since my gear is limited...so I'll stick to my limits.
We don't really fish Galveston and Corpus any differently, it's pretty much the same setups. I haven't heard a whole lot about spanish mackeral in Galveston, I'm sure they're there but I just don't hear a lot about them. We focus so much on shark fishing that I don't really keep up with what else is running, so I can't really tell you about whether pomps and macks will be in the water at that time. If they are though, then spanish love sabiki rigs and gotcha plugs. Pompano love shrimp and fish bites.
The piers and the beach are both great in Galveston. If you don't want to get messy in the sand then the 61st street pier is great. There is another pier, but I don't do the driving so I don't know what it's called, but there are two piers along the sea wall and both are great.
If not the piers, then the jetties along the seawall or the beach fronts across the seawall are also great, lots of reds, jacks, etc run through there. In general fishing along the seawall is kind of what you'd be aiming for if you're trying to fish there for a day, it's a convenient location with easy parking.
Pup sharks will eat exactly what you'd expect them to eat, using a steel leader, 5/0 circle hook and a chunk of any kind of fish you can get. That or a live piggy perch or something. It's not hard to feed them, they'll even hit shrimp. Sandbars will be long gone though. Hope that helped; like I said, since our primary focus is on sharks at this point I don't think I have much to offer in terms of knowledge on things like Pompano or Spanish Mackeral. I know they're running in Corpus though, and sometimes the fish that run through Corpus will start coming through Galveston a month or so later.
