Water levels in the Galveston Bay Complex were just about as low as they get Wednesday. Again anglers were looking at bright, sunny skies, low water levels and a brisk, cold north wind. That combination is never good for fishing.
It appears that conditions will not improve until this weekend when a wind shift to the south and east will bring warmer Gulf waters back into the bays.
Saturday and Sunday might turn out to be a window of opportunity for catching trout and reds along the shorelines. When the water begins to warm and rise, fish will begin prowling the shallows again in search of food.
While we can expect things to be slow, this is a good time of year for sheepshead all around Galveston. The jetties, causeway bridges and barnacle-infested pilings and docks will be attracting the “jail birds” as they are called because of the white stripes along their sides.
I recall back in the 1970s visiting a friend at the Galveston Yacht Basin where he had his boat docked and seeing good numbers of sheepshead feeding along the barnacle-covered concrete pilings. We purchased some dead shrimp from the bait camp nearby and as soon as we dropped our lines in the water, both of us had a large sheepshead hooked.
After an hour or so, we had 15 in a big tub, and then the fun began.
It was the first time I had cleaned one of the fish. After the painstaking process of cleaning three, I bemoaned the fact that we kept so many. That was back then and today, there is a bag limit of five per person with a minimum length of 15 inches.
Sheepshead have turned out to be one of my favorite fish to grill. For grilling sheepshead, the cleaning process gets easier. First scale the fish, then cut the head off, remove the entrails and place the fish over a hot bed of coals. The heat sears the skin, leaving delicious white meat to enjoy.
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