Off the Beach

On the upper Texas coast, bay boats are king these days and serious offshore boats in the Port Arthur area have become rather scarce. Why? Bag limits and seasons have been tight for years in blue water farther offshore. The real opportunity now is for boats versatile enough to fish the bays and jetties with electric trolling motors, but also able to handle two-foot seas offshore while exploring oil and gas platforms within sight of the beach.

It’s certainly different out there at the rigs from years ago, when we had more platforms to fish. We generally had clear water to fish through summer (see the late summer dead zone section below). Even today, you can jig up all manner of fish around the platforms if they sit in clear, green water. (On our upper coast it can be muddy a dozen miles offshore for no reason; it’s very different from the mid- and lower coast). On our countless fishing trips out of Sabine Pass, if there was murky water at the jetties, maybe caused by a southwest wind, I would sometimes climb a jetty tower and scan for green water on the horizon. We would then head straight there, even in a jonboat when the water was calm. If we reached green water, the fish were there. That’s still true today.

The recent spate of hurricanes hasn’t helped bay fishing, which is one more reason to head offshore. Hurricane Harvey, a historic event in 2017, knocked Sabine Lake in the dirt, so to speak, for years after. And it still hasn’t recovered fully today, according to long-time locals like Mike Spencer. Veteran anglers, with much know-how from decades of fishing, sold their boats or saw them ruined in the storm. Then three years later, the boating bonanza of 2020 arrived, prompted by Covid, when new boat owners bought into the game. Gulf state boat dealers sold countless boats, glutting the market, and some have since gone out of business as a result, causing a shortage of warrantied boat and engine repair shops. Another problem was lowering massive Toledo Bend reservoir 12 feet, all of it dumped into Sabine Lake, which soon carried channel catfish and white bass. Most of the local saltwater fish fled. Making the nearshore platforms in the Gulf an even brighter prospect, if you can reach them with a suitable boat.

“Maybe this will be a good year,” says Spencer, who has the right boat for bay and nearshore Gulf fishing. “We got normal, seasonal fresh water at the right time last year, and that’s great for the shrimp, menhaden and blue crab populations, according to Texas A&M. Those important species also don’t do well in a drought. So, we’re looking forward to this year.”

The number of saltwater species at those nearshore rigs has been amazing over the years, from ling and snapper, hordes of Spanish mackerel and big ladyfish, even pompano, to a tribe of seatrout that somehow is comfortable far from any bays or jetties. In the late ’60s I knew people who claimed to have caught 12-pound trout out there, usually while fishing at night with Seahawk fast-sinking stick plugs (now called Gotchas). Some of the rigs had big gas flares that lit up the night, and the water was thick with trout. One oil rig worker told me that trout packed on the surface under his rig in the lights “looked like maggots.” So, we tried a trip out there and were caught all night in three-foot seas. We slept on the rig in sleeping bags but very poorly, as waves churned and crashed beneath us only six feet below. Our boat danced all night on those waves, but the rope never broke. (The trick is tie up to a rig’s thick swing rope used by oil company workers. The drooping, heavy rope acts as a shock absorber. One of the practical, offshore tricks we learned in high school).

On most trips we never saw another boat out there, and this can still be the case today, especially when you avoid summer’s peak boating season. We seldom brought heavy tackle out there, instead casting ¾-ounce gold spoons or jigs around the structures, letting them settle deep before the retrieve, which covered the entire water column. Trout stayed close to bottom. Summer’s tripletail were suspended or even loitered on the surface. On some of the bigger rigs I’d climb aboard and doodle-sock inside the structure, horsing up trout and pompano. From the higher vantage point I could see lots of bluefish and sheepshead, and the occasional ling passing by. It was serious work for a stiff rod and baitcaster reel filled with 20-pound (hard) Ande line, but somebody had to it.

Back then there were no artificial reefs in state waters to speak of, though there were a few attempts with old tires or car bodies, which soon disappeared in soft bottoms. The only reef I ever heard of that didn’t disappear was the car body reef off Galveston Seawall, which of course rusted away but for some reason also carried long-lasting concrete pipe that landed (for once) on firm bottom. We didn’t fish there until the late 1980s and it certainly carried a variety of bottom fish, including big croakers, whiting and gulf (or sand) trout during late autumn and winter. Today there are extensive and properly-designed artificial reefs in state waters that attract a variety of fish, including spawning flounder in winter, but they don’t quite attract surface fish with the variety and numbers we’ve seen at platforms topping the surface. (Building structure to the surface means lights and sometimes horns to ward off shipping and liability claims, while also avoiding possibly leakage from oil and gas. Sadly, a great many older platforms are now gone, cut off below the mud line with dynamite and carried away by barge).

Some platforms still remain out there, host to great light tackle casting. Light tackle being 20-pound line, because rig pilings are coated with big, razor-sharp barnacles. And mackerel with their sharp teeth will try to take your rod away from you, so bring those light, wire leaders to avoid cut-offs.

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The ideal season for fishing these offshore spots is April into June before the water warms and the annual “dead zone” arrives, caused by Mississippi River runoff, which flows west as far as High Island. When this bad water recedes in October, the fishing improves again. America’s biggest river carries all manner of fertilizer runoff, (22 percent from Iowa), causing an oxygen die-off as the Gulf heats up. Obvious signs are dark water with occasional pieces of water hyacinth, where at the rigs you’re lucky to see a single spadefish. This dead zone, usually 2-30 miles offshore, generally dissipates when cold fronts cool the water, and it fully disappears each winter. The “Big Muddy” has been dumping nutrient-rich water into the Gulf long before the white man arrived, but modern agricultural fertilizers have greatly expanded the problem. Each summer’s dead zone is different depending on the river’s outfall. If the river is low and barges are having a tough time dodging sandbars, then summer’s dead zone in the Gulf shrinks and may not even reach Texas waters. Another negative factor is the Gulf now reaches 90 degrees each summer, which lowers dissolved oxygen content even further. No oxygen, no fish.