Location: Galveston – North Jetty
Air Temp: 65-73
Water Temp: 66
Depth: 10-34 feet
Water Clarity: Range of Clear to Muddy
Winds: 10-15+ mph
Seas: calm to choppy
Bait: live shrimp, dead shrimp and fresh blue crabs
Made the trip from Austin to Galveston for some more action
on the big uglies (black drum) and also wanted to have some fun on light tackle
with sheepshead since it is also that time of year where they are all over the
rocks at the jetty.
My long time friend and fishing buddy, Alan, joined me for
the trip. We were hoping to make it a
father/son trip, but our sons had other stuff going on and did not make it this
time so we will have to shoot for it again in the future. It had been a while since the two of us made
a trip and it was good to catch up on politics, rocket science, global warming
and the lack of traffic around Austin.
Ok, not really, but we did catch up on the usual stuff: fishing, family and faith.
I usually stay on Galveston island and launch from the Yacht
Basin, but decided to mix it up this time and launch for the first time from
the Texas City Dike to see how the ramps, parking, fee, trip to jetties and
knuckleheads at the boat ramp compared.
The ramps, dock area, parking and fee was as good or better ($15 less
per day on the TCD) than the Yacht Basin and the run to the North Jetty only
seemed a little longer from the Dike.
Knuckleheads are everywhere and I somehow found a few at the Dike that
thought is was appropriate to sit at the bottom of the ramp and block anyone
else from launching for far longer than it should take. Even by myself, I can probably back the truck
down, hop on the boat, move the boat to a dock out of the way, tie up the boat,
then move the truck from the ramp in about 5 minutes. While waiting in line, and after putting my
boat back on trailer and getting out of the way on Sunday afternoon, I saw one
boat that took up the ramp area for at least 20-30 minutes. “Here’s your sign.” The only negative I found was the shallow channel
leaving the ramp area at low tide. The
channel is not very wide and I may have somehow missed the deeper part, but
there was a short stretch that was 1.5 to 2 feet deep which is little shallow
for my deeper V hull boat, but no worries other than likely pulling some
sediment into the water cooling system of the engine which hopefully did not
cause damage.
The weather was nice both days, but the winds did create a
steady chop at certain points during the weekend. We found protected water on the Gulf side of
the North Jetty once we had bounced around enough on the channel side. It also gave us the opportunity to use the
light tackle and have fun catching sheepshead.
We landed 9 black drum ranging from about 20-30 pounds using fresh blue
crabs cracked into two pieces of bait per crab.
The action was much slower on the black drum than my trip a few weeks
ago, but still fun since these fish were very active and pulled more drag than
normal for a bull black drum. On
Saturday, we purchased the last quart of shrimp from a small bait shop beside
Boyd’s (they were out) and those worked great for the sheepshead since we
landed and released about 12-15. On
Sunday, no live shrimp so we only caught and released about 5-6 sheepies using
dead shrimp. A few of the sheepshead
were in the 7+ pound range and put up a great fight on the light tackle.
When we stay on the island, we usually have Nick’s/Gaidos
for dinner, but tried the Reef Seafood House in Texas City and the food was
good, but not great. The service was
great, so no complaints at all about the service or the atmosphere of the
restaurant. May try another place next
time just to keep mixing it up. Always
fun to make it out on the saltwater and already look forward to another trip.
Tight lines!
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