Report submitted by 'Oz'

PINS Surf Report Padre Island National Seashore, TX March 12-13th, 2005 Tweet

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Spring time is just about upon us and the bite is soon to get good. Until this weekend, the water temperatures along the Texas coast have remained fairly cool throughout the winter. A warming trend the past week was bound to provide with some action at some point. Kip and I headed down after a late start on Friday to meet up with Moose and a few of his friends that were out for the day. We finally meet up with them around the 20mm and when we arrive find BT, one of Moose's amigos who picked up a nice Flounder.

We venture down to what we expect to be an excellent location when the winds switch. However overcast skies and a steady northeast wind provided us with little action. Moose and his compadres decide to head on out leaving Kip and I to hang in there. The sun was setting and Henry and Mike roll up to join us.

First off the next morning we get some baits out. We ran out shark baits covering a lot of area with a lot of different bait. Monster Whiting are taken by Mike and Henry on fishbites along with a nice 3' Bonnethead Shark Mike Released. Interesting.. could things be turning on?

With the calm seas and not a cloud in the sky, I decided to journey out the yak with a rod and some bait. Having noticed some Sheepshead schooling on the bars, I thought I would give it a shot and possibly stock up on bait. Water was extremely clear and could see an array of drums, sheepshead, and rays cruising around.

I grabbed a few pictures underwater along with some various video of the convicts trying to utilize the shade of the kayak as shelter. With the hundreds of Sheepshead and all my extensive fishing and typical sheepshead fishing methods, I only end up landing one of them. In the mix while using small fresh peeled shrimp, Inailed a couple pigfish.

Wind changes direction slamming from the South/SW. This was the moment we been waiting for. After about an hour and the current already picking up out of the South, Henry gets a run but the fish quickly drops the bait. After a few more minutes Kip's 16/0 starts taking drag heading into the current. It was like someone turned on a switch and the bite would remain for the rest of the day. Kip is hooked up on to what we thought was a mystery fish.

After a short fight, Kip lands a 6'7" Blacktip Shark. The largest I have personally seen landed anywhere. What was more impressive was the incredible girth of this goliath. The Blacktip would have gone for 150-175lbs in my book. The shark hit a 10# section of Ray intended for a larger shark however this one thought it would make a meal out of it anyway.

After a successful tag and release, it isn't long before one of my long-range baits is hit. A shark picks up on of Henry's mega Whitings and I bring in and release another fat female Blacktip.

The action would soon continue as Mike hooks up just after dark and lands a nice 5'3" Blacktip.

Somewhere during the evening Kip hooks up in the first gut with a heavy Red that picked up a shark bait. Unfortunately the pics don't do this fish justice. After a couple pics Kip walks out and releases the Bull Red.

The next morning we had several baits out that got nailed but no pickups. Then not long after Henry lands a decent Blacktip that hit another bait intended for a larger audience.

A few hours pass and we decide to pack it up and head home. We are driving up north and soon find a place that looks too sharky to pass up. We stop there and run a few quick baits out to see if there were any takers. We left baits out to sunset when Kips 6/0 goes slack. He catches up to it and finds out he is hooked up.

After a somewhat short fight Kip lands another fat Blacktip going 5'11".

After this last shark, we decide to pack it up for reals this time and head home. It was great to get out there as usual and the beginning of the spring-time bite will only make things better for the next couple months. While we didn't bother at the time due to shark rods out, there were two different reports of Jacks being caught down the beach. There weren't birds on top of them from what we were told, just had to be at the right place at the right time as the schools passed through. Nice to see everyone who was out there and a congrats to Kip on his mega-Blacktip. Bring on the Sargassum!

Good fun!
-Oz

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