Rockport Fishing Report – April 1st, 2018

Happy Easter to all, and welcome to your first Rockport fishing report for April. We are hoping everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend. Many were on the water, taking advantage of the nice weather. Others chose to be with family and friends hunting for Easter eggs, rather than tails. All are correct choices on this day. But we will focus on the Southwest Texas fly fishing end of things now, for this Rockport fishing report on this first day of April.

The fishing this past week was very good. Possibly even very very good. Some days, it was just a bit tough to tell, with all that wind blowing. We have still been fighting some pretty tough Spring winds. Not show stoppers by any means, but certainly blowing a bit harder than we would expect for this time of year. Mainly, we aren’t getting those few hours in the mornings with light winds, before things heat up and start to blow as the day goes on. Instead, we are still tending to start the day with a “stout” wind, then increase from there. Again, never a deal breaker out there. But certainly making things tougher some days.

The water levels this past week have been great. Plenty of water to get into all of our favorite spots. Maybe even a bit more than expected some days, allowing us to get just that much deeper into the lakes or marshes we are fishing. But wherever the water goes, so go the fish… right?!?!

Aside from the wind, which we can hear howling as we write this Rockport fishing report this evening, the weather has been great. Temps for both angler and fish are perfectly comfortable. Slightly cloudy mornings are typically giving way to sunny days and afternoons. This has allowed for a variety of fishing opportunities and techniques.

We have been favoring the early morning program lately. Leaving the dock around 7am is the norm these days. Our reward for the early effort… tailing fish, and lots of them. While the light is low, or during the cloudier mornings, we are finding great numbers of tailing fish. Many in smaller schools, but plenty of singles or tailing pairs as well. This has made for some excellent early morning fishing, especially for those looking to throw topwater offerings. Then, as the sun comes up/out and the day goes on, cruising fish become the standard throughout the remainder of the day. Also quite productive throughout most days.

As for our fly selection as of late… it has been a bit of a mixed bag, as usual. We definitely have a rod ready to roll with a topwater fly of some sort. The Tube Top is an easy favorite. But the Chug Bug and Private Dancer are all working well when thrown at tailing fish. As the day goes on, and tails become harder to find, we have been throwing a variety of flies. If fishing over grass, the Tube Sock or Reducer are our choices. But most any baitfish pattern will do. If there is little grass around, you would most likely see us tossing crab patterns or the Redfish Reaper at cruising fish. We did land a few fish last week that were puking up shrimp, while we were unhooking them in the boat. So more than likely, they are just happy, hungry and willing to eat.

You can tell it’s getting warmer these days out there. We are starting to see a variety of fish swimming around on the flats, or en route to the flats. Jacks, kings, pompano, skipjacks, bull reds and even a few sharks were all seen by our guides this past week. So it may be time to get that 10wt in the boat, in the even that we stumble into a school of…??? Just sayin’.

The weather this week is looking pretty darn good. Nice to be able to report that with consistence. And it sure does feel nice to be on the water every single day again. Days off are the worst! But we will be out there all this week, scouring the flats of Southwest Texas in search of fish. We have a bunch of new website info and material in the works. Maybe a bit slower coming than expected, but close for certain. So stay tuned to the website for that. There is also rumor of another video edit being close to completed. Fingers crossed there as well.

We have boats on the water every day this week. So we will try to get an updated Rockport fishing report out for everyone later this week. As always, we try to keep folks informed with what we are seeing out there on the Texas flats. You can always email any time if you would like any up to the minute fly fishing or Rockport type news. We continue to post on  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Or perhaps SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel as well. We continually are trying to add more videos and stuff there. We try to keep stuff fresh for those of you that are wishing you were on the flats with us. So be sure to follow us on all our social media stuff. And don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter below.