Red Tide

Ok I've had a ton of emails about Red Tide.  Here's the deal.  It's a naturally occurring algae bloom that kills fish. It's been around forever.  It does not kill people.  Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPW) says you can actually eat fish killed by Red Tide.  I personally wouldn't, but that's up to you.  Do not eat oysters from the bays until TPW says it safe.  The Red Tide does hit the oysters very hard and makes them dangerous. 

Now that you know Red Tide is not poisonous to people I know you want to know what it does to fishing.  Ok, it gets on the gills of a fish and the fish suffocates.  You can actually see the fish surfacing to try and get air.  They splash around on the top of the water trying to find air.  The Pelicans, Seagulls and fish will actually gorge themselves on these dying fish.  I've been watching this go on for a week or so now.  The Pelicans won't even get up in the air.  They're just sitting in the same spots on the water waiting for a suffocating fish to get close enough to grab.  The Redfish are stuffed with mullet and shad that they are picking up off the bottom.  It's very interesting.  I personally have not seen many dead fish other than mullet, hard head catfish and shad.  I've seen a handful of Flounder, one or two Redfish and no Trout.  I've been on the water for the last  60 days without many breaks and I'm covering a lot of area.   

The big problem with Red Tide is two things: 

1.  It allows the fish to gorge on dying fish and makes them more difficult to catch as they stay full.

2.  It moves the bait fish around.  The bait (Mullet, Shad etc..) either dies or leaves.  The fish eat all the fresh dead bait and then have to move around to find more food.  So, you catch fish in a spot one day and the next they aren't there.  The fish leave to find more bait.  Not a big deal, just making it harder to pattern fish while the Red Tide is around.  Find the bait, find the fish. 

The Red Tide is annoying to people. It makes you cough and irritates your eyes.  Some of my customers sneeze a lot.  Two weeks ago I had to move from a spot because we were coughing quite a bit.  We were catching fish left and right and didn't want to move, but it was really irritating.  That's pretty much all you need to know about Red Tide.  It's not a big deal.  If it's on the beach where you're staying you might have to drive down the beach a bit to find a clean area to swim (actually just to get away from the stinky fish smell).   TPW has some good information on Red Tide too.  You might look it up on their web site.