March Madness arrives on Texas’ waters
Bet on boat ramps rimming Texas reservoirs and bays being much busier than usual this week as a triad of concurrent events — spring break, the shift to daylight saving time and, most important, a general outbreak of outstanding fishing — conspire to draw a wave of anglers to the water in a piscatorial version of March Madness.
Ramps on Lake Fork promise to be especially hectic for multiple double-digit reasons that surfaced over the past week or so, heralding the for-real start of the annual big-bass blitz in that storied reservoir and most of the rest of the state.
And the 200 or so public boat launches along Texas’ coast also are likely to see a significant surge in traffic for much the same reasons, but with sow trout and thick-shouldered redfish replacing big bass as the fishing focus.
Where will most of those saltwater anglers launch their boats? Well, a look at the top 10 busiest coastal boat ramps provides a good idea.
First, bass — only right since largemouth bass are, by far, the most popular game fish in Texas, fresh or salt. And more than a million Texas anglers eagerly anticipate the middle of March when water temperature warms and largemouths, especially the big females grown even heavier with developing eggs, waddle toward shallows for their annual spawn. There, these big fish, at their heaviest weight of the year, are more vulnerable to anglers than just about any other time.
Big bass already weighing in
Last week produced strong evidence that big-bass season has kicked into high gear. Dozens of fish weighing more than 8 pounds were reported across the state, and several topping 10 were landed. But the two heaviest came from Lake Fork and included what may be the largest largemouth landed from the lake in several years. Certainly, the 15.48-pounder is the heaviest Fork fish to be donated to the state’s ShareLunker program in five years and the first ShareLunker entry to come from the lake since 2014.
On March 2, John LaBove landed the 15.48-pounder from Fork and offered the live fish to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department-run ShareLunker program. The fish was the first 13-pound-or-heavier largemouth entered in the 2018 ShareLunker program, which solicits live 13-pound largemouths caught between Jan. 1 and March 31 for use in hatchery selective breeding programs.
LaBove’s largemouth also is the first Lake Fork fish donated to the program since a 13.88-pounder landed in November 2014 and the heaviest Fork largemouth since a 16.04-pounder caught in February 2013.
On March 8, LaBove’s fish got a roommate in the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center’s “Lunker Bunker,” the facility at the TPWD hatchery dedicated to monitoring, caring for and attempting to spawn 13-pound-plus fish. That day, angler Michael Terrebonne landed a 25-inch largemouth that hit the 13-pound minimum dead on the nose.
With those two fish, Lake Fork has produced 259 of the 572 13-pound-or-heavier largemouths donated to the ShareLunker program since Texas began the cutting-edge selective breeding and research operation in 1986. Fork’s closest competitor among the 68 Texas public waters that have produced ShareLunker entries is Lake Alan Henry with 27 entries.
Those two huge bass were not aberrations as the dozens of heavyweight largemouths landed from Texas lakes over the last two weeks attest. And that pace is increasing as surface water temperatures climb past 65 degrees — the magic number for triggering bass spawning behavior.
Bass fishing is good and on the verge of becoming great on a lot of Texas lakes. But Fork seems particularly hot, just now. How good? Before Terrebonne landed the 13-0, he caught a 9-pounder from the 27,000-acre East Texas reservoir.
So expect to wait in line to launch a boat on Lake Fork over the coming week and more.
Coastal hot spots beckon
The same could happen at ramps on the bays as families take advantage of spring break to spend the mid-semester holidays on the coast and the change to daylight saving time gives anglers who live within easy striking distance of bays the opportunity to use that “extra” hour of daylight to wedge in an after-work fishing trip.
Coastal anglers have plenty of incentive to hit the bays. Despite some nagging problems with freshwater runoff in Sabine Lake and upper reaches of Galveston Bay and the seasonal hassle of gusty winds, water conditions on most of the coast are good — decent clarity and moderate to high salinity levels in most areas. Even better, fishing success has been surprisingly good in some areas. And it is about to get better as water temperatures climb to near 70 degrees, boosting metabolism of trout and redfish and heating fishing success.
So bet on most of the public boat ramps sprinkled along the coast seeing a stream of visitors this week, with business building as spring takes hold. And it is a cinch some particular ramps will be busier than others; they always are.
Despite the abundance of boat launches on the Texas coast, some access sites draw far more traffic than others. And being close to a large population center doesn’t appear to be the driving a factor in a ramp’s popularity. Being close to good fishing does.
At least that is what jumps out from a list of the 10 busiest boat ramps on the coast.
That list has hard data behind it. Throughout the year, TPWD coastal fisheries division staffers based out of field stations on every bay system from Sabine Lake to the Lower Laguna Madre conduct multiple standardized surveys that count the number of boat trailers in parking areas of boat ramps.
On the day of a survey, staff visit all boat ramps on a bay system, counting trailers.
“We do them on days with good weather to get a representative count,” said Mark Fisher, TPWD coastal fisheries science director. “And they’re all done during a standardized time period.”
The total count, which in sprawling systems such a Galveston Bay involves multiple crews checking dozens of ramps, gives fisheries managers an idea of the total number of boats on the bay and the percentage of that total at each ramp. This is crucial to generating solid statistics on fishing pressure and extrapolating total harvest in conjunction with the agency’s standardized creel surveys conducted at some of those ramps on other days.
Busiest ramp on Galveston Bay
As might be expected, the busiest ramp on the Texas coast in on Galveston Bay, the state’s largest bay system, most heavily fished and located in the shadow of the state’s largest metropolitan area.
The Sansom-Yarbrough boat ramp on the Texas City Dike is, perennially, the busiest launch site on the Texas coast.
“It’s always at the top,” Fisher said.
But it is the only Galveston Bay ramp in the top 10.
The Matagorda Harbor ramps, which offer access to East and West Matagorda Bay, are the second-busiest.
Ramps at the Adolf Thomae Park on Arroyo Colorado on the Lower Laguna Madre rank third.
Ramps on Aransas Bay and adjacent Corpus Christi Bay hold three top-10 spots — Conn Brown Harbor at fourth, Cove Harbor seventh and the Port Aransas public ramp ninth.
Tiny, end-of-the-road Port O’Connor on San Antonio Bay holds two ramps that rank among the state’s top-10 busiest. Froggie’s ramp is the fifth-busiest in Texas, and the Port O’Connor Fishing Center ramps were eighth.
Ramps at Bird Island Basin on Padre Island National Seashore, which offer boater’s access to the heart of the Upper Laguna Madre system, rank as the sixth-most heavily used launch location on the Texas coast. The public boat ramp complex in isolated Port Mansfield on the Lower Laguna Madre rounds out the top-10 list.
Expect all of those ramps, a lot of the other 190 or so public boat ramps on the Texas coast and just about every ramp on Texas’ best bass lakes to be busy this weekend. It’s spring break. Fishing’s good and promises to get even better. And we have an extra hour of daylight in the evening to fish.