Rockport Fishing Report – March 22nd

A bit later than planned, but here is an updated fishing report for Rockport, Texas and surrounding waters. We’ve made it a majority of the way through March already. So we will update you with what we are seeing and doing on the Texas flats while we are fly fishing for redfish.

Tonight marks the end of our two busiest weeks of Spring Break around here. Week one was pretty hectic around the Coastal Bend. Even with all the recent events and virus issues. But week two was much more calm. Especially as the week wore on.  Things just kept getting weirder and weirder. But by now, most folks are back to their homes and things are pretty normal around here. Well, whatever normal is these days. But enough about that stuff… for now.

The fishing the past couple of weeks has been good. At times very good, or even great. At other times, just good. While our weather wasn’t bad the past little bit, it wasn’t great either. Most days have been plenty warm. But we’ve had an impressive run of fog and cloudy weather lately. Not a huge deal, but really annoying. The good news though, the wind has been pretty mellow most days as well. So all in all, the weather has been just fine. We just wish the sun was shining every day.

With the warmer temps each day, often topping out right around 80 degrees or so, the water temperature has been great. Low to mid 60’s in the mornings is common. Temps already in the low 80’s in some shallow areas in the afternoons. For the most part, that is a pretty solid range for these redfish. So they have been plenty happy most days.

Mornings have been the jam lately. Most morning, tails are easy to find right out of the gate. Very often, bank crashing is already happening by the time we get to our spots as well. But even on the foggiest or cloudiest mornings, we are still able to see fish consistently, thanks to their activity. In the past few days, larger schools of fish have become pretty steady in the morning as well. For three consecutive days, we were finding schools of 20+ fish ripping down the bank. Each day we would see a dozen or so of these schools each morning. Finally! It seems like it’s been a bit later than usual to start seeing these large schools consistently. So a welcome sight for sure.

The tides lately have been great. We’ve been fishing strong falling tides in the mornings. This is a big reason for all the good activity out there early. As things turn, the fish have been fairly active on the incoming as well. But our mornings have far outfished the remainder of the day. But on the incoming tides, we are seeing a lot of big drum moving around. So not a bad idea to be prepared for that. But both incoming and outgoing tides have been strong, making for some happy fish.

With the warmer water everywhere, we have been seeing some other stuff swimming around as well. Jacks are moving around both inside and outside of the ports. We’ve seen a single triple tail. And a few other random things as well. A sign that Spring/Summer is here, or on the way. So we are keeping a couple heavier rods in all our boats… just in case.

Fly selection has been all over the place. Most days, a crab is the first thing out of the box. No big surprise there. We still prefer darker colors first. But a variety of crab patterns have worked. There have been a few fish, and even a few schools of fish, that were a bit more selective. We watched a couple of schools turn their noses up at crab and kwan style flies. That was a bit of a shocker. But then the next fish we put it in front of ate them with no hesitation. Whatever. But you will find many of the fish landed right now are spitting up smaller grass shrimp all over the boat. Others can be seen chasing baitfish on the surface in the middle of the flats. So take your pick and fish it confidently. Don’t take it personal if you get snubbed, and move on to your next target.

Many days we are finding a very good number of solo tailers. Some near the bank or mangroves, others working further out on the flat. But many will be alone. So you will catch a glimpse of their tail, then lose it for a minute. Then it will reappear ten feet away again. We highly recommend the topwater game for these. It’s been an absolute riot, if you have enough action from the fish. A few days we ended up feeding a couple dozen fish on the surface. Always a good time. So maybe keep a rod strung up with your favorite topwater fly on it. Just sayin’.

We’ve been fishing all over the place. Seadrift and closer to Port O’Connor one day last week. Lot’s of days on the South side of Rockport and Port A. Just mixing it up a bunch and hitting all types of different stuff. Everything seems to be fishing just fine. Maybe we are finding a few larger fish South of Rockport. Maybe that is random luck. But everything has fished well.

With everything going on currently and the caronavirus issues at hand, we are finally starting to experience a great deal of cancellations. Obviously this is not what we want for our guests, or our Rockport fly fishing guides. But it is the reality at hand. So we are doing our best to roll with it and support those we can in our community. As we learn things, we will do our best to share the knowledge. But we intend to continue working and guiding, until the state tells us we are not able. We know this is inevitable at this point. So we are just hoping to enjoy every moment on the water that we can with folks right now, and see what happens later on.

We will try and get one more Rockport fishing report for March out to you all at the end of this week. 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.