Nighttime is right time for summer fishing
The still, sultry air smelled of salt, sunscreen, sweat and surrender, with maybe just a whiff of spoiling shrimp thrown in.
Welcome to fishing on a Texas bay from midmorning to early evening just about any day from July through August.
What began at sunrise as a pleasant outing under relatively comfortable conditions (if 90 percent humidity can ever be considered comfortable), had deteriorated to a sweltering, suffocating endurance test under an searing sun, beating the bay so relentlessly I expected to see bruises appear on the boat’s white gelcoat. Even with polarized sunglasses, the glare was blinding.
We were withering. The fishing already had. The speckled trout that, for the first hour or so after sunrise, had regularly and greedily grabbed the live shrimp that we had drifted beneath popping corks over the submerged oyster reef had disappeared, driven off the reef and into cooler, darker waters by the broiling sun and a slacking tide. Now, it was just the occasional “snot shark” — gafftop catfish — and their pestiferous hardhead catfish cousins, and even they were few and far between.
No shade. No fish. Not much fun at all. Even if the fishing had been worthwhile, the sun sapped all resolve. Time to give up — yield the field to the blistering beat-down that, this time of year, limits enjoyable time on the water to just a couple of hours after daylight and maybe the same ahead of dusk. And that applies as much to fishing on inland waters as it does along the coast.
Except there is a way around this limitation: fish at night. A way to beat the heat
Along with being the best way to beat the summer heat, fishing at night during these hottest weeks of summer can produce results unmatched during daylight hours. Fish — predator and prey — often become more active and aggressive as water cools during the night and are more likely to move into the shallows where the fish are most vulnerable to anglers.
Nighttime fishing is not for everyone, and it often involves special tactics and not a little planning and extra safety considerations, especially if it involves operating a boat after dark. Plus, it can pretty much wreck the whole next day if the evening’s fishing stretches past midnight, as it often can. But the benefits can be well worth the effort.
Here are nocturnal options for anglers looking to take advantage of what summer nights offer:
Some of the best, most accessible nighttime fishing along the coast occurs on fishing piers. Commercial piers, such as those on the Galveston beach front, offer anglers safe, easy access to what can be outstanding fishing for a variety of fish.
The pier’s lights are as important to fishing productivity as they are to angler convenience and safety. Forage species such as menhaden, mullet, shrimp, bay anchovies and others are attracted to the glow of lights on the water and can concentrate in great numbers in the illuminated areas.
Predator species invariably follow. Sometimes those predators — speckled trout, redfish, black drum, pompano, even the occasional tarpon and king mackerel — plow into the congregations of forage. But mostly they hang just beyond the light’s limit, darting from the darkness to pick off an easy meal. A lure or a natural bait fished at the edge of the light or just beyond is the most commonly effective tactic. A little light, a lot of fish
This same tactic works from lighted private piers or for bank-bound anglers on places such as the Texas City Dike or Rollover Pass, where serious nocturnal anglers haul electric generators and banks of high-intensity lights, creating their own fish attractions and plugging into what can be fast fishing.
Nighttime can produce outstanding topwater action on inland and marine waters for anglers willing to give it a try.
On the lakes, some of the best, most heart-stopping topwater fishing for largemouth bass occurs during moonlit summer nights. Once the sun goes down, largemouth bass often ease out of deep water, where they sulk during the bright, hot daylight hours and hunt the cooling shallows for sunfish, frogs, snakes (yes, snakes), crawfish and other aquatic life found in the life-rich littoral zone.
On East Texas reservoirs such as Toledo Bend, Sam Rayburn and others, nocturnal bass anglers typically target areas holding thick banks of aquatic vegetation growing in relatively shallow water (3-6 feet) but adjacent to a drop-off to much deeper water. Noisy topwaters — chuggers, “slush” baits and buzzbaits — are top lures, the theory being that, in the darkness, bass depend more on sound than sight to locate prey. But other bass anglers prefer large, quieter baits such as Zara Spooks or other cigar-shaped plugs that can be worked slowly and present a large silhouette against the night sky.
Still others find they have more success throwing soft-plastic worms — big ones, 10 inches or longer and invariably black in color. The big worms are worked in and around the edges of thick hydrilla beds or other cover. Sounds are amplified
Both fishing styles can be very effective. But the experience of launching a topwater plug into the darkness and depending on sound, not sight or touch, to signal a strike, is the ultimate attraction of nighttime topwater fishing for bass. It is a sound and a experience singularly found when fishing at night. Throw in a full or nearly full moon — the best nights for such fishing — and you have the makings of a memorable evening.
The same applies to coastal anglers targeting speckled trout. Speckled trout also move into the shallows at night and not just to feed. Speckled trout spawn in early evening, and they spawn all summer long — adult females release batches of eggs several times over several months.
That spawning usually occurs in relatively shallow water near channels or other deeper water, with clusters of fish — males and females — congregating in relatively small areas, where females release eggs and males fertilize them. Those fish can be hungry. Wade-fish the right shoreline on a summer night, throw a topwater plug into the void, work it back by feel and sound and try not to jerk like you’ve been hit with an electric shock when, out there in the blackness, comes a sound like someone pitched a bowling ball into the water.
Then there is the coastal experience, a combination of fishing and hunting, available only at night — flounder gigging.
Only at night do southern flounder move en masse into inches of water where they settle like piscatorial pancakes on the bay bottom, waiting in ambush for some unsuspecting anchovy, killifish, finger mullet or small crab.
And only at night can a fisher/hunter armed with a gig slowly and carefully stalk the shallows, illuminating the bay bottom with a lantern or, more likely, a batterypowered, waterproof light, looking for that singular faint outline of a “bedded” flounder. A quick and well-considered stab with the gig, and the night stalker is one fish closer to a five-flounder limit. In search of flounder
Flounder giggers get to see a world not visible to those who fish during the day. The bay shallows are alive with life — flounder and rays, myriad small fish, shrimp clinging to stalks of flooded spartina, and a dozen species of crabs. Each step can trigger a chartreuse sparkle of bioluminescence. It’s like the water is alive — which, in fact, it is.
Being on the water on a summer night, fishing, is far different from being on it during a summer day. And not just because it’s cooler and more comfortable and the fish can be so much more cooperative. But that certainly helps.