hey guys. im lucky enough to have a father-in-law that just recently bought a beach house down on south padre island. technically its across the street from the beach front house but still great. i was planning on doing some fishing from the surf and was wanting some information or tips that might help me hook into something big. honesty id be happy catching anything but the bigger the better. I have bottom fished with squid and cut bait in galveston but never on padre. what about fishing with artificials? I would love to catch saltwater fish on artificials just cuz i have never done it. anyways all the help is much appreciated

sooner, PINS is a premier stretch of coastline that can offer you a big time opportunity to haul in a variety of species of fish. as long as you have some decent to quality gear(and a 4wd), you should do pretty well every time out. when the wind dies down and the water turns green, i'm headed there myself. if your father-in-law has a place down there, then you already caught urself a keeper.lol...

Great place for the odd big fish. I have caught a dolphin, several small tarpon, amberjack, blacktip shark and kingfish in surf there when the water gets real clear all on artificials. Also catch fingerling mullet and use them live. Best in early fall when the number of people dont get in the way. good luck

4x4 is preferred but most of the time the first 10 miles of beach is accessible by 2wd.

hey txmuddog, what kind of artificials have u had success with in the past? also let me know the best way to fish it as i am new to this. thanks

ok I am not a guy but love it just the same, i love to surf fish on padre island especially at 8 mile line there used to be a sunken shrimp boat that you could see, but since then has dissapeared, anyways that is good fishing and around 12 mile line plenty of sharks there. I have always used cut mullet or live finger mullet with much success, never gotten into the artificials as the other posters said it must be very calm waters as you will soon find out why.

it seems like most of the stuff u guys are talkin about is on padre island but up closer to corpus than to where i will be staying. we are on the very southern end of south padre so any info for this area please let me know. thanks for all the help

drive over to beach access 5 or 6 and get your vehicle on the beach and drive.

but really anywhere in the surf is fine as long as there's no people around to get stuck in your lines/hooks.

hey guys thanks for all the help. got back from spi last night. on sunday we went to beach access #6. along with every other person within a 100 mile radius of the place. it was packed. tons of people everywhere. i did manage to get some fishing in between the swimmers. the 2 big catches of the day were a bonnet head shark and another shark i believed to be a spinner shark. both were about 30 inches. it was pretty exciting. and alot of people were scared seenin as i caught them with hundreds of people swimming in the area. the funny thing is all the hispanics came running over with their camera wanting my picture with the shark. it kinda made me a celebrity for 5 minutes. over all it was a great trip with good fishing and i cant wait to go back. thanks again to all that provided information.

Tell me about your set up. I'm going to SPI for a week in June and want to surf fish in the mornings.
Thanks, Mike

The jetties are a good place to fish at spi

if u drive north on the beach u will usually see some fat old white folk swimming nude greasing up the water and leaving a oily chum line which will attrack some shark! so if u got bad eyesight or can handle fishing around naked wrinkled old fat weirdo freaks ull do ok! lol lol lol

actually just find a riptide anywhere along pins and start fishing!!

I have waded behind the convention center in mid summer and caught Red Fish and Snook on topwaters or gold spoons. I would concentrate on the flats rather than the beach.