Texas deep sea fishing: red snapper and the long run

What you fish in Texas, and when

Red snapper is the fish Texas is built around, and the rules come in two layers. Inside the state’s own waters, which run about 9 nautical miles out, snapper is open year round, so the closer reefs hold them through the year. The bigger fish sit farther offshore in federal water, where the season for permitted charter and head boats is a summer one. Around the snapper, the reefs and wrecks give up king mackerel, ling (cobia), amberjack, grouper, and vermilion snapper, with sharks and bull redfish on the nearshore trips.

The wide, shallow shelf off Texas is the thing to understand. Depth and structure sit a long way out here, so a full day can mean 30 to 60 miles each way to the better grounds, and the tuna runs go farther still, out to the standing rigs and floaters where blackfin and yellowfin tuna, mahi mahi, and wahoo hold through the warm months. Summer is the peak, when the weather settles, the federal snapper season is open, and the pelagics and kingfish overlap; the bottom fishing holds up most of the year, so winter is a quieter, closer in season rather than a dead one. South Padre and Port Aransas reach sailfish and the odd blue marlin in summer, the closest thing Texas has to a billfish coast.

The Texas ports compared

Four ports carry the fleet, and they differ more in format than in the fish. Galveston is the busiest and the easiest to reach, an hour from Houston, with two big walk on head boats at Pier 19 and a private offshore fleet at the Yacht Basin, snapper close in and tuna on the long overnight runs. Port Aransas is the hub of the Texas offshore fleet, the deepest and most varied bench on the coast, from a fast private catamaran to big party boats and overnight tuna safaris. Corpus Christi, just across the bay, is a quieter all private scene of six pack and cabin boats with no head boat, so a split six pack is the cheap way out there. South Padre Island, at the southern tip, runs one head boat and a handful of private sportfishers on the longest blue water runs, the best shot at billfish.

Getting to the Texas coast

The Texas coast is long, so the port you pick often follows the airport you fly into. Galveston sits about an hour southeast of Houston down Interstate 45 and is the simplest to reach from a major hub. The middle of the coast is the Coastal Bend: Corpus Christi has its own airport, about three and a half hours from Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, and Port Aransas sits just across the bay on Mustang Island, reached by a free ferry or the causeway, about 45 minutes from the Corpus Christi airport. South Padre Island anchors the lower coast at the far south, about 30 minutes from Brownsville and its airport, near the Mexico line.

Texas is one of four states on our Gulf of Mexico coast. The same red snapper grounds run east through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama toward the Florida line. Pick a port for its full ranking, every boat scored on one national standard.