Aransas Bay first timer

I am going to fish Aransas Bay for my first time in a couple of weeks. Can anyone give me some good information on safety and what I need to pay attention to while I'm boating in this Bay. I have a 21 foot Cajun Center console boat. Any tips on how to fish the oyster reefs for speckled trout, redfish, flounder.Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.


Last edited by razzie1947; Yesterday at 05:07 PM.

William Houghton

 

Get yourself one of these maps:

https://hooknline.net/products/f116-upper-laguna-madre-hard-copy-fishing-map-with-gps

I’d probably go up to San Antonio Bay as the Copano reefs got knocked down pretty bad from Harvey. Aransas Bay reefs I guess were ok too but many more options in San Antonio Bay. Those maps won’t be updated, more than likely. We kept on trying to set up on them in Copano and probably 1 out of 4 were really there. If you find an updated map, let me know.

Brock sir no disrespect but I'm going to disagree with you on those H&L maps. I have a pile of them and don't use them. Google Earth is a much better resource/tool and more updated. Those H&L maps are decades old. They have some good info no doubt but there's also a lot of false/inaccurate info on those maps. And the scale is off too which makes them hard to use for navigation.

OP Aransas Bay doesn't have a lot of reefs. I'm guessing your boat needs about 18" of water to keep up so I'd recommend to stay in the channels and cuts. The surf is a great place to catch trout right now if it's fishable. Jetties can also be good. Where do you plan on launching?

Jerry,
Good point on google earth. I use it to see passageways during low water months for navigation. What do you look for to know if it’s a reef?

Tim

I do wonder how accurate those maps are, and how often they are updated. I've used Google Earth to find spots to fish, just wish it showed water depth and underwater obstructions.

Tim reefs are usually more light color with sometimes a darker edge around them. The 1st pic shows reefs (yep that's a duck shaped reef!). The lighter color is dead shell and the darker color around it is live living shell. Most of the time the fish will hold on the live shell. Grass and shell can be really hard to tell apart sometimes. The 2nd pic I believe is shell due to the darkness of the color.

I asked the owner of H&L how often they are updated and the answer was mostly rarely and in a few cases never. There has only been 1 new addition to most of them and that new addition is now over 20 years old. The maps do have some good info on them and could be worth it in some cases. I would verify the info on them either with Google or ask someone before I put a lot of time into fishing an area or spot on those maps.

Even with Google Earth you have to keep in mind Harvey changed a lot of things (reefs, rocks, cuts, etc). I'm told Hanna changed some things too further south.

So are you saying that you can see these for reefs 4+ ft deep?

If you'll notice the pic was taken in January. That's when the tides are low and the bays are flushed out. Water definitely wasn't 4 feet deep there when that pic was taken. Probably more like a foot to the shallow parts of the reefs. Also this pic was taken when the water was really clear.

I found an app called "Fishidy", I think you can pay $50 or $100 a year and get access to all kinds of underwater wreck/obstruction data. I think it's more up-to-date than the H&L maps, but I use Google Earth to confirm. My process is:
- Find obstructions that are marked on Fishidy,
- Use Google Earth (earth.google.com) to zoom in as much as possible, and see if you can see anything. You can mark the points yourself on Google Earth, and save them as a project. Then you can have all of your research with you on your phone when you go fishing.
- For extra credit, download Google Earth Pro (free) for desktop. They have historical data -- this is useful because you'll get lucky (sometimes!) and find days where the tide was really low, or the water was really clear.

I like Google Earth for another reason -- if you don't have a boat, you can tell where fences are, so you can find places that are public (or, more often, "public-ish"). I'm currently poring over a bunch of urban ponds around Austin, looking for bass fishing places But I've used this method to re-examine places that I grew up fishing (Surfside, West Galveston Bay, Matagorda) to find places I didn't know about. One example, I'd never fished this little stretch of bayshore (I'd fished about every other adjacent piece of bay shore!), but you can see some AWESOME potholes here. Last time I was back in Galveston I nabbed some nice specks and reds fishing them

Hope it helps!

Great Information. I haven't used the Fishidy app, but have looked at it several times.