Looks like i'm going down to Freeport in a week. Anybody have any tips etc for the surf or jetties. I've heard alot about the area but this will be my first time fishing there.

Thanks for any help!

I have only fished in the area once, and that was for a tournament so I didn't get to run around as much as I wanted. However, I CAN offer advice that's fairly solid for pretty much every jetty on the third coast if that's what you're after?

...and that advice would be...?

There ABSOlutely no fish anywhere down here. Nope. Just stay home.


Alright alright... most of my advice has been discussed in other threads in this section, but if phlishop or anyone else has any specific questions please ask away. I'm supposed to be studying right now so sorry for the brevity of this, I'll flesh it out a bit later.

OK, here goes.

What kind of line setups do you use? Sink tips, shooting lines/tapers, floating, fast sink, intermediate?

Right now I have a floating/intermediate sink tip in a 10 weight. Thinking of ditching it for shooting tapers: 1 floating and 1 intermediate running line, and then mix/match the shooting heads. Also would that work in the jetties and surf?

For the jetties I like intermediate or sinking. For the surf I like floating. As far as flies clousers, deceivers, seaducers, and for bigger fish any large hackle fly will work. Chartreuse in white, red and white, pink and white, and blue in white seem to work the best.

Depends on what the fish are doing. If I'm fishing the channel side or off the end of the jetty trying to dig deep after redfish or trout in the channel or kings/tarpon off the end, I wouldn't mind having the missile launching capability that a shooting head would give me and the ability to drop through a lot of water and current down to the fish before the end of my drift. I find however that most of the fish I have caught off the jetty have come in the first 10 feet of the water column, easily reachable with intermediate line, which often resists being blown around and driven by wave action more than its floating cousin.

So what I'm saying here is, like normal, you'll have to assess the situation as it stands the day you plan to fish, and go from there, which can give advantage to the experienced flycaster who strolls out on the jetty with an array of shooting heads in hand or in the truck. Wind/waves/current/target species all will play a role in dictating what you choose to bring out of the arsenal.

If I had to choose one for a catch-all, it'd be a fairly slow sink intermediate. That way I could still fish a topwater if the occasion presented itself.

Whatever you use, be sure to either use a stripping basket or steel yourself to slowly but surely degrading your line. Barnacles, sea urchins, granite and wave action can combine to make a heckuva nightmare out of your line.

What I would do, and what was suggested to me by a much more experienced jetty flyfisherman, would be to check out the striper guys up in the nor'east. For instance, these guys probably have waaaaaay more experience using shooting heads than most of us. There is some solid advice to be had there, of course as with any forum territory be cautious about taking anything as gospel