Rockport Fishing Report – February 17th

The week is over, and it’s time for another fishing report for Rockport, Texas and other surrounding waters. We have reached mid February, and hopefully the end of our Winter down here on the Texas Coast. We are ready for some Spring fishing around here!

We had another pretty interesting week around these parts. Plenty of foggy mornings and cloudy days for us again. We just can’t seem to kick this trend around here. That being said, we did see the sun a little bit later in the work week. And it was about darn time too. We were starting to wonder if we would ever see it again.

But we did get a decent dose of sunshine a couple of days. Combine that with some fairly light winds, and it made for some pretty pleasant days on the water. Unfortunately, it was a bit short lived and turned on us again just in time for our weekend trips. Saturday morning again greeted us with heavy fog, mist, full blown rain, clouds and all those other things we hate. This continued on into the better part of today, before a fairly stout North wind help blow it outta here.

With all this funky weather hanging around the past few weeks, the fishing has been kinda off. It hasn’t been horrible, but it hasn’t been what we would consider “good” either. Even the days the sun did come out, it was far from good fishing out there. We were able to see a decent number of fish moving around many of our flats. But lots of them were still acting really lethargic and disinterested. Many still weren’t moving much, until they knew the boat was on top of them.

All that being said, fish were moving around. On the sunniest days, a crash or two would be seen along a bank. Or maybe a random tail popping up here and there. But most were solo and far from consistent. Signs of life none the less, so we’ll take it. Our best results were coming out of a bit deeper water. We were finding a good number of schools working around some of the deeper portions of the flats. Most were 5-10 fish or so, and moving around in 3-4 feet of water. Or hanging out in some of the potholes at that depth as well. Most of these schooling fish were a bit smaller than the solos, but we did see plenty of them out there to keep us entertained.

As we got out on the water Saturday morning, we were again greeted with dark skies and fog. The fish definitely didn’t approve, as most were laying around in the mud or thick grass. As we got into the afternoon, a very select few finally decided to get up and move around, but these were few and far between. They seem to be liking this weather about as much as we are.

For those select few fish that did decide to play nice for us, a few different flies worked. The crab was our first choice most days. But a couple of baitfish or mullet patterns worked well too. Lot’s of sheephead out there moving around right now. So if you want to entice them, maybe go with something on the smaller side of things. Shrimp and dime sized crab are our favorite.

The water is a bit on the lower side lately as well. Not crazy low, but a bit lower. With a strong North wind today, and a good portion of the coming week, you might expect that pattern to hold for the foreseeable future.

The coming week doesn’t look a whole lot better around here. As the reports read now, we won’t be seeing much of the sun for our entire week around here. Many of the days have a decent chance of showers and temps will hover near the 60 degree range. That pretty much sucks, for those of us that want to get out and target fish. So this could be a long week down here on the Texas Coast.

We will be playing the wait and see game all week, hoping the weatherman is wrong and things improve a little bit. But we may be spending a good bit of time at the golf course, instead of the water. But we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

If you are looking to get out on the water, you can always contact us any time if you would like to BOOK A TRIP or need any up to the minute Southwest Texas fly fishing or Rockport fishing 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.