I'll be fishing the galveston surf this weekend and want to know what lures work best. I usually use live bait but thought about throwin some spoons. Any particular ones that you guys have had good luck with?

I have had good luck with gold and silver spoons with red tails at Galveston. Also, Gulp or DOA shrimp. I mainly use the artificials if bait fish are running in the surf. Its a blast. Reds and Specks hitting as fast as you can cast. When it dies down, I switch back to live or cut bait.

How far out in the surf are you... I still can't get my bearings on where the sand bars are... or aren't... lol

Corey,
It's simple. The waves break on top of the shallow sandbars. When the water is green/clear you can plainly see them. They parallel the beach.

If you walk out into the surf you'll notice the water gets deeper and then shallow again. Then it gets deeper again...even deeper than the previous gut. And again it will get shallow before it begins to drop off again.

The shallows are the sandbars. The deeps are the guts. There's a series of them. Usually 3 but sometimes more. They gradually get deeper the farther out you go.

Like LP said if it gets shallower its a sandbar, when you feel it getting deeper, your going into the gut.

Depending a where your fishing will depend on how far out you can go. Some beaches you can only wade to the second sand bar. Others you can get out to four of them. Also what you want to catch. If your going for bull reds, big drum and medium sharks, then you have to go out further.

Ive caught fish at just about every gut. The biggest Speck I ever caught was between the beach and the first sandbar at high tide. I usually start closer to shore in the morning and work my way out deeper as needed.

I like to throw top waters early like spook jrs or he and she dogs. Walk the dog with them and watch a spec hit that sucker! If there not hitting on top or just hitting the lure and not taking it then switch to the spoon or lures mentioned above. Good luck!

Thanks guys for explaining the "guts". That helps a lot.

I fished the small rock jetties on Galveston this morning.
The water was great looking, green to the beach. alot of bait in the surf too. I started out with a spoon
and I would get bites on every cast but nothing was taking it just tapping. I switched
to a TTF flats minnow and caught all sand trout on it. It seemed the slow steady
retrieve was the key. if you don't have live bait go with the flats minnow.