Rockport Fishing Report – December 25th

Welcome to your Rockport fishing report, Christmas Edition. Actually, it’s pretty much just another fishing report. Although it is Christmas today. So Merry Christmas to all. We hope everyone is enjoying their day with family and friends. We are doing the same and enjoying our day off of the water. Although with the weather we’ve been having, it is tempting to grab the boat this morning.

We’ve been busy lately, and slacking on our fishing report. It’s been about two weeks since our last. Oops! But things are fishing very well around here. And with all the good weather, we’ve been on the water a ton.

We’ve been blessed with excellent weather pretty much throughout December. A week ago, we did get shut down for two days with rain. But this was actually our first rain in months. So it was a welcome sight. We’ve heard some say we are a good 9″ below normal on rainfall right now. Not at all surprising, based on how nice it’s been. But we need the water and it was just a day or so, as it dropped almost 2″ in most spots. But other than those couple of days, it’s been pretty much amazing around here.

Most of our mornings lately have been in the mid 40’s as we leave the house to grab our boats. Pretty chilly really. Also, many have had heavy fog, due to the cold air temps. But by 9am or so, the sun is shining and things are burning off and warming up quickly. Then it’s good to go for the rest of the day.

Water temps most mornings are in the lower 50’s. A little chilly, but not too bad. But as the sun comes out, the temps begin to climb as well. Usually topping out in the low to mid 60’s most afternoons. So there really isn’t a huge need to get out there early in the mornings at all. The fishing definitely improves over the course of the day. We’ve been going around 9am most mornings, and wrapping things up around 4pm as you are starting to lose your sunlight a good bit. We’ve been seeing fish pretty much right out of the gate in the mornings. But the mid day to early afternoon hours are prime time.

We’ve had boats fishing all over the place lately. Matagorda, Port O’Connor, Nine Mile and pretty much everything in between. All is fishing quite well. On the colder mornings, focus on areas with softer mud bottom. Even better if they are close to deeper cuts or water. They’ve been holding the most fish on the colder morning. As things warm up, you can fish pretty much anywhere. The fish have been moving well in all kinds of water.

After the last little front that brought all the rain, we’ve had some pretty low water around here. Nothing too crazy, but a nice Winter low tide. Since we’ve had very little wind to speak of lately, it hasn’t bothered us much. We can still fish pretty much anywhere we want, without needing to hide from the wind. Even better, with the lower water, we’ve been seeing a lot of tails and schooling fish. As the days warm up, it’s been common to see a school of 50-100 fish moving down a bank in some of our more shallow lakes. Seems like when they get ready to feed, they all get going. So that has been pretty fun.

The drum fishing has been outstanding this past week. The smaller fish, 20-24″, are tailing all over the place. Most of these are going to be singles. But the larger drum are cruising around solo all over the place. Not uncommon to have 10+ shots at big drum each day, in the right water. They’ve been slow cruising the flats in water just deep enough to cover their backs. And they have been surprisingly cooperative for us as well. Most are very willing to eat a fly. Especially larger ones that are easy for them to see.

We are still seeing some big bulls around, but nothing as good as it was a couple of weeks ago. We figure maybe some of them moved out with the big loss of water this past week. Or maybe the salinity change with all that rain didn’t help them much? Either way, we haven’t been seeing quite as many as we were previously. But we’ve still had our shots at them. So not a bad idea to keep that heavier rod rigged up, just in case.

Fishing water with a lot of grass and potholes has been very good lately as well. There are a bunch of really large trout around, if you can get the sneak on ’em. They can be pretty spooky most days. They prefer to lay in potholes not much larger than they are. Most aren’t moving at all, when we spot them from the boat. This makes them pretty tough. But if you can get a fly to them, before they feel the boat, they have been willing to eat. Most are in the upper 20’s as far as length. We’ve come kinda close, but still searching for that elusive 30″ trout this year.

We’ve been tossing all kinds of different flies around lately. Of course the crab has worked very well. So we sometimes stop using it and force ourselves to dig a little deeper in our fly boxes. But shrimp and baitfish patterns have all worked. The larger drum have preferred big dark patterns. Bull reds prefer the same as well. But we’ve had them eat smaller crab and sliders as well. The big trout out there are eating small baitfish patterns best for us. While we’ve had a couple eat a crab, a lightly weighted baitfish pattern has been better. The Thumper is our favorite. It lands soft and hovers very well as you strip it in front of a fish.

Our weather continues to be quite nice today, Christmas Day, as well as the next couple of days. But it is looking like we have a little more weather coming this weekend. So we are keeping an eye on that as it approaches. Hopefully it blows through with no issues. If not, it looks like we get to stay home and watch all the college football payoffs. Not a bad consolation prize.

We will try and get one more Rockport fishing report out to you all before the end of the year, as we do have boats on the water. And of course 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.