Sabine to Port Mansfield, member run
moved from Beaumont to Seadrift in june so this is my first fall down here. up on Sabine the bull reds show up at the jetties around the first of october and everybody knows it. down here i keep hearing about the fall run and nobody will tell me when.
is it the same deal, big schools of bulls at the pass, or is it the slot fish in the back lakes? mostly fishing San Antonio Bay and the delta out of Seadrift in a 22 Mowdy, willing to trailer to Rockport if that is where it happens.
two different things and people mix them up. the bull red run is the spawners, 30 to 40 inch fish, at the passes and jetties, Cedar Bayou, the Aransas jetties out of Port A, Pass Cavallo, from late september into november. the other fall run is the slot fish schooling up in the bays when the water cools and the shrimp start moving out. that is the one that fills the boat.
down here in Baffin it is only the second one, we have no pass. first cool morning where you want a jacket in the boat is when i start looking.
mansfield answer: bulls stack on the East Cut jetties by the first week of october and hang around through november. but the tide is the thing, not the date. big incoming tide, birds working the shrimp coming out of the drains on the falling side. watch the tide chart and the wind, the calendar is only a rough guess.
for Aransas and Copano specifically. slot reds start ganging up on the Copano shorelines and the flats behind Traylor and Mud island when the first front pushes the water out, usually the second or third week of october. before that they are scattered singles up on the grass. bulls at the Aransas jetties from late september, cut mullet on a heavy rod, that is a different trip and a lot of guys do it out of a different boat.
if you want a real date, i keep a log and the first "school of reds" entry is oct 14 in 2023 and oct 9 in 2024. so it is around there. the shrimp pour out of Copano right after the first norther and the reds follow them to the mouth.
and check the current red drum rules on tpwd.texas.gov before you keep anything over the slot, do not go by what your uncle told you in 2015. i am not going to argue the rule in here, just do not be the guy at the ramp with a 32 incher and a story.
update for whoever searches this next fall. a small front came through last weekend and the water dropped about a foot in the delta. wednesday evening i found a school of slot reds pushing shrimp down a shoreline in Ayres Bay, three fish in 20 minutes on a gold spoon and then they were gone. so rockport's dates held for San Antonio Bay too. thanks all.