Rockport Fly Fishing Report – May 8th

We are one week into May and due for an updated Rockport Fishing Report, for Rockport, Texas and surrounding water on The Coastal Bend. It’s been almost two weeks since our last report, so we will do our best to get you caught up on what we are seeing out on the water each day, and what we are expecting for the days to come. Then hopefully we will have another Rockport Fly Fishing Report for you in a weeks time.

Overall, we would say that it’s been pretty solid fly fishing The Coastal Bend. Really, the weather has been the only drawback for us. We’ve had a decent shortage of sunshine, and over abundance of wind. Not exactly ideal for the whole sight fishing thing. But neither are bad enough to keep us off the water at all. Just really annoying.

For the past two weeks, or more, it seems like we wake up each morning to clouds and winds already blowing 15 mph. or so. Then it picks up from there. Seeing 20-25 mph every day is pretty common place. Again, not a deal breaker at all. But it is really annoying.

Most of the days have remained mostly cloudy until the early afternoons. Then the sun will finally burn through, just about the time you are thinking about heading to the ramp. Really annoying! Not really our norm for this time of year. It is Spring. So wind is just a normal part of the deal. But typically our mornings aren’t too bad, then you know it will ramp up around noon and on through the end of the day. But usually we have plenty of sunshine to make it all happen still. 15-25 mph and cloudy all day is just a huge pain in the ass and not easy on anyone out there.

All that being said, the fish are there. Or at least we assume they are. Ha! We still see plenty of fish every day, just not as many as we should be. Also, not as many quality shots as we would like each day. With the sun out, we should be seeing 100-200 fish a day out there. Hopefully a good number of shots out of those fish as well. But with all the cloudy days, it’s been a little tougher. Many of the fish we are seeing, are running from the boat already. Again… annoying!

The water had been up a good bit for a couple weeks straight. But here in the last few days, we finally had a good bit of it flushed out with some strong tides. This left a good number of flats much shallower and easy pickings. Since the water dropped, we are seeing really big schools of fish every day. Yesterday and today our guides found schools of 75-100 fish in a few different spots. Plus many others in the 20-30 range. All of them are feeding like crazy and moving across the flats steadily.

Schools this big don’t go away easily. So its not too difficult to pull one out of the school, then get back in front of it and get another.  Wash, rinse, repeat and you can boat a bunch of fish in a pretty quick time. Those schooling fish just regroup and keep plowing across the flats, looking for food. This has been a savior on a couple of these days with tougher weather conditions.

As far as flies and stuff, we have done a bunch of different stuff. The schooled up fish don’t care at all. They will eat anything that moves. This includes topwater flies as well. They are just gettin’ after it and hungry. So throw whatever you want in there and be ready. But we highly recommend anything topwater’ish. Way more fun.

For the reds that aren’t in schools and acting stupid, they are still eating ok. A few of our boats this week reported some picky fish. Part of that could’ve been that some of the shots were pretty close to the boats, with the crappy light conditions. But it seemed like some of the singles or paired up fish were on a little smaller program. They would sometimes follow, but not commit, to a crab or slightly larger fly. So putting something smaller and “easy” in front of them seemed to help a bunch. Smaller grass shrimp patterns worked well. We were screwing around trying to catch sheepshead one afternoon with a mud crab pattern about the size of a dime. That ended up catching 8-9 reds that day as well. They just seemed to pick up the smaller stuff without much issue. Probably more an attitude thing that fly thing. But something we noticed.

There are still black drum swimming around EVERYWHERE!!! Large, small or everything in between. They are just freaking everywhere out there. Some folks will cast at them, many don’t care and watch them swim by. But they are there and most are willing to eat for you. Darker patterns are better for this stinky things, as usual.

There are plenty of jacks around as well. Unfortunately, we haven’t really had much weather cooperation to put in quality time to play with them. Most days have been pretty rough and not worth the effort to go mess with them. But we have had our shots here and there. They are around in good numbers and will remain for the warmer months. We would assume the tarpon, kings and everything else are here too. But with it blowing 25 every day, we haven’t even bothered to go look really. But sooner than later, we will get the big boat out and start making it happen.

The past few days have been really warm down here as well. Heat index today said 107 by mid afternoon. Seems a bit early in the year for that garbage weather! But our water is already really warm, grass is growing and apparently it is never going to rain here again! We could really use a good shot of rain down this way. Or any change in the weather to kind of mix things up a bit. We would appreciate it, and so would our fish.

This coming weekend is Babes on the Bay here in Rockport. It is hands down the worst weekend of the year to be here. It’s going to be crowded on the water, at the ramps and pretty much everywhere else as well. Pretty much a nightmare every year. But we hear that they have more entries this year than ever! So that’s special I guess? Either way, its a mess out there. So we will be trying to hide and fish some different stuff at the end of the week. If you are thinking of coming down to do a little fishing on your own, you may want to keep that part in mind. It will be a junk show out on the water. Of course there are tournaments most weekends from now on. And they are all terrible. Especially the fly fishing tournaments!!! But this is the biggest of the year and just something to keep in mind.

We are out every day for the rest of the week this week, and the foreseeable future.  We will continue to report back as we can with what we are seeing out there. Also, we have a new series of videos coming to our Youtube channel as well. Something kinda funny and different to do. Flyfishing is not serious. Or at least it shouldn’t be. So we are gonna have a little fun and make a few funny videos based on the lighter side of red fishing.

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 other such stuff. 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.