We are headed down to Jamaica Beach on Friday for a few days and I'm bringing my boat. Just looking for patterns and types of areas (no specifics) to target for trout and reds.

Jaydub, I am heading down to Jamaica beach next Friday for 9 glorious days on the bay. I am taking my bay boat as well, I went last year but didn't have the new bay boat set up yet. Darn near every dock down there has green lights at night that make catching sand trout, and the occasional "other" species really easy in the evenings in the canals (I use live shrimp with a small split shot). Right now the reports have been the southern end of the West bay first thing in the morning along grass lines watching for tailing reds. Also the ICW seems to be holding fish in and near the entrances to Carancahua lake, and Green's lake (just watch for boat traffic in these areas). I am hearing that live croaker is the best bet, followed closely by live shrimp. As the sun gets up I would check on shell reefs. I know lthat Carancahua reef is just north straight out of the Jamaica beach channel and might be a good place to check during these times of the day. In addition, watch for a falling tide near any sort of structure or current break I hear that is a really good time to pick up a good bite for an hour or so. I sure would appreciate an idea of how you do this coming week if you wanna PM me while you're down there. Best of luck and tight lines to you!

Thanks Chris. The tide chart has high tide around 5-6 am for Sat thru Tue. So should have a falling tide while we're there. I see you have a Red Xpress Bay Boat. I'll be in a Blue Xpress H22.

My son and I will be hitting the lights at night and will try to fly fish under them.

Hope the tide is in your favor! We will be there starting Friday the 21st through Saturday the 29th.

Got back from our trip down to Jamaica Beach, and San Luis Pass man did we have a great time fishing the bay and hanging out on the island. First couple days of our trip we motored out to the rock jetties right behind the state park. On the jetties we couldn't keep live shrimp on our hooks for more than a cast or two at the most. Mainly small fish, undersized specks, reds, and a mixed bag of everything from puppy drum to jack crevalle. Although it was really fun, fishing a live shrimp on a 2 foot 12lb fluorocarbon leader on bottom did the trick everytime, tried to stay away from the mullet though lol. After a couple days of undersized fish I decided to trailer my boat to San Luis Pass, man what a great decision that was. We were leaving Jamaica Beach by 5:15 every morning to get on the water by 6:15 from San Luis Park boat ramp. We would stop by Bait Daddy's every morning to load up on bait rather fishing the bay or the pass (I cannot more highly recommend this bait shop). The first day at San Luis was all about the sharks catching mostly Bonnetheads up to about 38-40" in length, and day number 2 we had a mixed bag of bull reds, sharks, and a huge black drum. All in all it was a hell of a trip and made taking the boat all the way down there very worth it. At the pass I was fishing 30lb braid on a 3000 model Penn Battle 2 with a 7.5' medium heavy rod, using a knocker rig with 1oz. egg weight and a 3/O circle hook did the job everytime! And we were using either cut mullet or large eating sized live shrimp, day number one mullet was the ticket day number 2 shrimp worked better. Also fished the deepest cut under the bridge roughly 25-27 f.o.w. and allowed our bait to drift with the current under the bridge going in, or coming out 🙂

Great report.

We had wind a couple of weeks ago and didn't have the luck/success you guys did. We fished that same spot on the rocks and caught some small croaker. My son and I did have a lot of fun on Saturday night fishing the lights with our fly rods. We caught a bunch of 13-14" trout.

I did load the wife and kids (25 & 22) up on Sunday at lunch and made a run to the restaurant in Sea Isles. We picked up a 1/2 gallon of margaritas and had a nice ride back. The sunset cruise every evening made bringing the boat down worth it.

Nice Post - Good job getting those kiddos on the water !!