Each year, spring break goers come to Padre Island at Corpus Christi to spend the week and blow off steam. It also marks the start of the sheepshead run. Chris Salazar has made the trip many times to the island when he was younger.
“I started fishing about 2022 and I started seeing the posts of the fishing groups on Facebook,” he said.
When he saw posts that the sheepshead were running, Salazar and his friends decided to go down and fish during spring break.
The group started out at the jetties, but moved back to Packery Channel, where they had heard the action was.
“It was crowded,” Salazar said.
“You’re pretty much fishing shoulder to shoulder — hooks are flying around and weights are getting tangled. It’s kind of hectic.” Salazar said tempers stayed relatively cool despite the crowd of land based anglers and boaters.
“The sheepshead haven’t really migrated towards the jetties yet,” he said. “Usually by this time they are thick at the jetties, but it seems the winter has stretched on a bit longer this year.”
Salazar and his friends had success using live shrimp with a split-shot.
“The least amount of gear possible is going to keep you from hanging up in the jetties or rocks,” he advised.
There is no need to cast your shrimp a country mile.
“Eight to 10 feet away from the rocks and you can catch a limit pretty quickly,” Salazar said. “There were people casting to the middle of the channel but they weren’t catching much.”
For sheepshead fishing, Salazar recommends using an octopus hook with enough backbone that the fish can’t cut it with its teeth. He said the sheepies should move out to the jetties and remain there until early May.
