Rockport Fishing Report – May 13th

Here is your Rockport Fishing Report for the second week of May. Things have been a bit interesting around here since our last report. Lot’s of weather, which has been making things a bit challenging for us some days. Maybe a bit more of the same for this weeks report as well.

Fishing around the flats these days has been… ok. Not good. Not great. And not terrible either. But a solid OK seems to be a pretty fair assessment. We are seeing and catching fish every day. But it hasn’t been easy out there lately. It has had its moments, where the skies part and fish are plentiful. But those moments aren’t quite as frequent as we would typically be accustomed to this time of year. So we are having to power through a little bit of the bad to get to the better, or even good.

Mainly, we have been dealing with some pretty tough weather for a good week or so now. With all the big storms North of us in Texas, we have been picking up the tail end of many of them. This is bringing with it a lot of clouds, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, etc. Just a bunch of crap that can make life a little tougher out on the flats. Most days, it’s just more of an annoyance than anything. We are still plenty fine to get out on the water all day. Maybe there will be a few light showers. Typically we are seeing a bit of wind. And unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of clouds. Not exactly ideal for sight fishing.

And if that isn’t annoying enough, the water this past week has also been very high. So the fish are spread out all over the place and have plenty of room to roam. Schools and tails have been pretty tough to find the past week. We are still finding a couple here and there, but nothing like the weeks prior. Many days have come and gone without sight of a school, tail or crashing red. Instead, we are picking away at them in areas that have been far too shallow to fish since last Fall. So some pretty tough sledding.

Now that we have all the “guide talk” doom and gloom out of the way, it actually isn’t too bad out there. Especially today (Monday). We’ve had a little bit of North wind the last couple of days. Combining that with some serious rain, darker skies and slightly cooler temps, we’ve actually cooled the water off a good bit. Some spots were reading as low as 72 degrees on Sunday, which is kinda nice. Days prior, the high temps on the flats have already reached the 85 degree mark. A bit warmer than we would like this early in our Spring/Summer season. So dialing that down a bit is a very good thing. In addition to that, we have lost a bit of water as well. So things are getting back down towards a fairly normal level. Still a bit higher than average, but far better than it was just a small number of days ago. All a bonus for us.

The fishing today was pretty solid, despite some tougher conditions. We had a few schools of tailing fish right out of the gate. All were more than willing to eat the first fly they saw. There was also a decent bit of sunlight in the morning and fairly light winds. So there were some good shots at cruising fish as well. Not a ton of shots, but enough to keep you busy. By late morning though, the clouds rolled back in and winds ramped up a bit more. This made spotting fish pretty tough the remainder of the day. We were still able to get some shots though, and boated enough fish to make it a pretty respectable day. It wasn’t easy out there. But it was better fishing than we had through the weekend. So no complaints there.

It just seems that these fish aren’t loving all this unstable weather we’ve been having. There are fish moving around, but nowhere near the numbers you would expect to be seeing right now. Perhaps as this water drops a bit more, we will begin to see them in bulk again. Time will tell. But they just haven’t been as active this past week as one would hope.

When we do have our shots though, the fish are eating pretty easily. Most are rummaging around in the grass choking down small crab and shrimp. So we have been sticking to our darker crab and toad patterns with plenty of success. No real need to stray from those, as they have been working very well. With the absence of tails and crashing fish, we haven’t done much with a topwater lately. If they begin to show themselves a bit more frequently, as they did today, we will certainly get those going again. But we haven’t really thrown anything on the surface this past week.

There are still tons of sheepshead moving around. So those are always worth a cast or two, if you have the right fly. Very small brown crab flies work well. Fairly heavy as well, to keep them on the bottom. You will also see a number of schools of small drum cruising around in some of the larger lakes. Most often, they won’t break stride to eat for us. But it’s certainly worth a try to get it in front of them. They will eat a crab just as any redfish would.

The coming week looks like a little more of the same. Maybe not quite as severe as last week though. Slight chances of thunderstorms most every day. This is fairly normal for this time of year. It’s the larger gnarly stuff like last week that we need to keep outta here. So hopefully these fish have a chance to settle down and get back to normal. The weather is plenty fine for us to get out there every day this week and into next.

This is Babes on the Bay weekend in the Rockport area. So if you aren’t involved… RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! It’s pretty much a junk show. So keep that in mind if you are headed down this way. There will be a bunch of boats out there this Saturday. You’ve been warned!!!

But other than that, things are looking ok around here. We expect the fishing to pick back up, with the improving weather. So we aren’t too worried about that. And we have a bunch of boats out all week. So we will report back with what we are doing out there and how things are looking.

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 report 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.