By Chester Moore, Jr.
Page 2
 
 

Davis likes to anchor up-current of a given piece of structure and fall back across it. The preferred method when fishing these areas is to use a typical bottom rig with either squid or Spanish sardine rigged on two circle hooks.

"A lot of times, you'll have a strong current and you need to get the bait down to the structure," Davis adds. "When you're fishing rigs, you've got a little more leeway, but presenting a bait 5 feet in one direction or another can make all of the difference in the world."

Just north of Galveston/Freeport is Sabine Pass, an area that probably receives less pressure than any spot on the Texas Coast. The fishing here is based around the fertile Sabine Bank, a plateau that rises off of the Gulf's floor and forms a shallow flat that parallels both sides of the ship channel that leads out of the Sabine jetties.

This 25- to 40-foot deep flat attracts an awesome amount of baitfish and is dotted by hundreds of platforms and wrecks that attract some monster red snapper. Sabine guide Capt. Todd Bryson of Complete Sportsman Outfitters (409-963-2512) expects some big catches at Sabine this summer.

"This area receives very little pressure anyway, but we basically had five months with no pressure to speak of," Bryson says. "The federal shut-down in November, coupled with an incredibly windy spring should have the rigs out here loaded with fish. The few times we were able to go out, we just hammered the big fish."

There are snapper as close as 6 miles off of the jetties here, but for the bigger fish, you might do well to use the 18-mile light as your marker. Once you get past the light, the water level drops off about to about 45 to 50 feet and you start finding some really big sow snapper.

"About 10 miles southeast of the 18 mile light," Bryson says, "are the Tenneco and Mobil Oil Fields. The water here gets very clear, usually ranging from greenish to ultra-clear blue/green."

"The best option is to tie off to one of the rigs and put out some chum down-current of the structure," he advises. "Bring a long rope and an anchor hook, so you can drift back from the rig itself. A lot of times during the summer, the big snapper will be suspended off of the rigs out in the open water. You need to chum them in to get their attention."

Bryson's favorite "chumming fish" are pogies. These oily fish can be bought by the pound at Sabine Pass bait camps.

What he does is mash the pogies up in a bucket and then throw the contents overboard. This creates an impressive oil slick and draws the snapper toward the surface.

Once the area is chummed, Bryson free-lines live pogies or squid toward the fish. He rigs the bait on a stout 4/0 hook and lets it do its thing.

"The key is to drift the bait slowly," Bryson explains. "During summer months, when the oxygen is low, a lot of the snapper are holding about halfway up the water column. Around the rigs, you don't always have to fish on the bottom. Also," he adds, "when the fish get to biting real good, we'll fish with big spoons and bucktail jigs and usually tip them with pogy or squid."

The thing about fishing for snapper, whether it be on the Sabine Banks or off of Port Isabel, is that it represents fishing at its finest.

Fishing the open blue water and catching hard-fighting, fine-eating fish like snapper is the kind of experience that can turn the curious novice angler into a full-fledged die-hard in a hurry.