Recently I've started enjoying surf fishing near the Jamaica beach area. There are plenty of public beach access areas AND you don't have to pay like at Seawolf park! As the weather started cooling down, we started catching more and more whiting which tasted great fried. I also caught my second redfish ever at San Luis Pass off of shrimp flavored Fishbites surprisingly...



I've found the most success when the winds were <15mph, but when it starts to get around 15mph+ I have difficulty keeping baits out. I also noticed that there was a bunch of seagrass at SLP (freeport side) when there was a strong south wind. I'm trying to document my fishing trips so I can put together good forecasts for whether or not the conditions will allow me to keep a line out. I was wondering if anyone could give me their experience with why seagrass shows up more often on some days than others... Is it when the wind or the current is pushing stuff towards the shoreline?

What ounce sinkers do you guys typically through to keep tension in your rods and prevent your baits from drifting in higher currents/winds?

5oz pyramids usually work unless current is tough

Nice post. You are learning fast!



Side Note: Keep fishing and good things will happen!

Nice red, fishbites are a killer bait for them and work incredibly well. For surf weights, the standard are 5oz and 8oz spider weights with 1/16 stainless legs (pictured below). These work in 90% of conditions unless the current is really raging then the weights will get switched out for ones with 3/32 legs. It is the thickness of the legs that really help hold down a bait and not so much the actual physical weight.

Wind and current both play a big role with sargassum weed, it gets pushed in from big Mats floating offshore and is usually the worst in the springtime. One way to combat the weed is to make sure you are casting at a pretty significant angle up into the current. By doing that and using spider weights, you are able to tighten down pretty good on the rod once the weight has anchored itself into the sand and the weed will ride up your line to the rod tip and you can pull it off. Hope this helps!

I'll have to get me some heavier pyramids... Thanks for the feedback!

I still feel like it's mostly luck for me haha but thanks for the encouragement! I think fishing is definitely going to be a hobby of mine for a long while.

Thanks for the tips! Just some clarification... For example, if the current is coming in towards the shore from the northeast, casting at an angle into the current would mean trying to cast my line toward the north east?

Also I might've been bending my wires wrong on the spiderweights haha I just kinda curved them a little bit. But I did learn on my last trip how to use them properly I guess and started to fully utilize them by digging them into the sand. Thanks for the picture and advice!

"if the current is coming in towards the shore from the northeast"

Generally the current in Galveston runs along the beach unless you're fishing in the pass, then there are some variances. So TPOTTS is saying, if you imagine yourself standing at the center of a clock, and you're facing the water looking straight ahead, that's 12:00. If the current is strong, you want to cast to 11:00 or maybe 10:30. When it's not crowded, you can also just walk down the beach against the current, then cast and come back. The seaweed rides the current and will pile up on your line, dragging it back in front of you.

Another trick here is to put your rod holders higher up -- you see the guys who go sharking down Padre Island have platforms on the back of their pickups, and stake their rods up there, 8-10 feet above the beach. That means the place where the line hits the water is further out, and the line goes into the water at a less severe angle, so you get less line exposed to the seaweed.

Atx_ben nailed it, that is exactly what I mean by casting up into the current. The current is going to be running parallel to the beach front either from right to left or left to right. Ben is correct on getting the rods as high as you can, this helps big time. The higher the rods the less line is in the water for weed to pile up on (and keeps your lines from rubbing on the bars so much and helps with getting cut off by other fish cruising the guts). My truck below for example. Of course you don’t have to have a shark rack or anything like that but just try and use long rods and get them up as high as possible. The more you do it the more it will all make sense, just takes a lot of sand time to get it down.

Ah that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the visualization! Also that explains why longer/higher sandspikes are preferable to the short ones... One of the reasons I came up with preferring my 5ft spikes vs the 3ft ones is that the surf wouldn't splash onto my reels, but that explanation of line angle entry makes a lot of sense as well.

Yessir! Great set up man. Maybe one day if I get a truck I'll have a setup like that too.

I'm hoping to get in much more sand time! It feels like it's usually less crowded on the beach, or at least there are plenty of public beach access points to choose from so maybe people are more spread out, which I like. Got my parents into fishing as well, they're jealous of the reds I caught when they weren't there, so they've been itchin to get out with me as well.

Really appreciate the tips - I'll be putting them to use this Saturday!

The secret to getting good at anything is just to do it a bunch, so you're on the right track