Is the offshore fishing as good off POC as maybe PA? we will be staying in POC and would like to run offshore for some Kings or Smacks while we are there. We normally stay in the Bay after trout and reds. thanks in advance.

Slickhead, my personal opinion is that POC is much better than PA. I started going there about 5 years ago, when a buddy turned me on to it. Since going there I have never been skunked. There is a big rig about 10 miles out from the big jetty, it is hard fished but I have always limited on kings, occasional lings, and mangrove snapper. If you head out SE from the end of the jetty, you will run into an area that has many rigs. They are about 15 miles from the jetty, but due to the angle you travel, they are only about 8 miles from shore. These rigs appear to have less pressure on them and hence I have caught 15+ lb snapper, grouper, kings, lings and shark on them.

If the sea's are rough, I usually fish around the big jetty. When the tide in coming in, I usually anchor up just inside the North side of the jetty (bay side). When the tide is going out, I anchor up on the southside (gulf side) of the big jetty.

POC is a great place to fish, there are many options, have fun.

Port A 07.09.11 - There were also 7 Blues caught the same day...fishing has been unbelieveable.

I would suspect that true offshore out of POC and PA would be very similar. What we can reach in bay boats is not real offshore. This time of year I run out of POC when ever the weather will let me. But, nearshore is fickle. It can really be on one saturday and really off the next. If blue water pushes to the jetty's, kings will follow. Unfortunately, kings will also follow it back to 38 miles out which I can't quite stomach in my boat. I have had decent luck with ling, snapper, and smacks when the water wasn't quite right for kings. You can really wear your arms out fighting jacks while trolling aroun the jetty too.

A note of caution, if you decide to run out. Rough at the first rigs usually means really rough at the end of Jetty. Also, at first light lots of offshore boats will be clearing the jetty and heading out. Be sure to give them some room.

Draper, have you tried going SE from the big jetty in POC? You will run into a mess load of rigs and it seems like they are not as heavily fished. I was catching snappers in the 15-20lbs range, a few smaller groupers (if we targeted them I'm sure we could find some bigger ones), limits of Kings and almost every rig we pulled up to had ling. Now you are correct that it is not the same as going 20+ miles from shore where you can hit the weed lines or color change for different species. But with my bay boat, POC is the best for "near shore" fishing.

This is an interesting discussion. I too own a bay boat and am itching like crazy to take it offshore. The one observation I have made is that Port A tends to be rougher than other places on the texas coast. Seas might be 2-3 from POC all the way to 1-2 ft seas in Galveston, but it will be a solid 2-4 or 3-5 in Port A. I am thinking about making a trip out of Port O Connor just to see what its like. All this is new to me kind of......I grew up fishing offshore in Miami Fla and we never went 30 miles offshore unless you were going to the Bahamas, the real nice blue water was only a couple miles off the beach. I trolled for Mahi, Wahoo and Sails in a 17ft Boston Whaler regularly!

cub, It is definately different fishing here. I can only speak from my experience, if you are going strickly for fishing, POC is the place to go, if you are going with your family and want to spend time on the beach, then PA is the place to go. POC is a longer drive, but with a realatively short boat ride, you can start getting into the bigger fish.

Here is a great website that has the gps locations of all the oil rigs in the gulf. You can import it into Google earth to see where the concentrations are.

http://www.travelbygps.com/special/gulf/oil_gas_rig_platform.php

Remember one thing, generally the roughest water is at the mouth of the Jetties, especially during peak tides.

Good luck and have fun.

by the way, make sure you have a decent computer before you use this overlay, there is a huge amount of data.

Bleach, SE is the direction we run. I usually avoid the most popular rigs. I've also caught decent ling off the rubber boat wreck. We tried to run out this past weekend. Conditions saturday weren't great and decided not to fight the boat ride. Did see two bay boats head out though. Sunday would have been decent but didn't have time. I was able to talk to some folks. Kings haven't made it to the Jetty yet. Should be anytime, we just need blue water close.

Draper, I'm not familar with the rubber boat wreck, where is that located?

Its 7ish miles north east of the end of the jetty. Have to have the coords to find it. All my stuff is in POC. Next time I'm down I pull the #s.

Thanks