Texas Gulf Coast Fishing Report: Reds, Trout, and Flounder Bite Strong on Fall Tides

This is Artificial Lure, dropping a fresh Gulf of Mexico Texas fishing report for Saturday, November 8, 2025. Good morning to all you salty hands and pier jumpers out there. Let’s get straight to the bite and what you can expect if you’re heading out today. Sunrise warms the coast at 6:44AM, and you’ll want to be on the water by then—sunset pulls its curtain at 5:23PM, giving us a classic cool weather Texas fall window. The weather’s settled into that north wind pattern after a front earlier in the week, and the bay waters are cooling—a prime time for those classic Gulf species to crank up their feed. Expect light to moderate northeast winds through midday and a high around 70°; not bad for November and just enough breeze to keep the bugs down. Checking the tides, the Texas City and Galveston charts show an early morning high around 1:23AM, followed by a low tide at 8:29AM and the next high by midafternoon, just after 3:20PM, before the water falls again after dusk. These moving tides, especially that falling water through the morning and rise in the midafternoon, are your golden ticket for good action, especially near marsh drains, cuts, and edges according to Tide-Forecast.com. For the fish: it’s prime time for bull reds, speckled trout, and flounder in the bays and surf. According to recent reports from Fishingreminder and Coastal Angler Magazine, the beachfront and jetties are loaded with big redfish—fresh mullet or cut bait on the bottom will get your heart pumping. Live shrimp under a popping cork is still king for those mixed bags in the bays, especially on deep reefs and shell with moving water. Speckled trout are active over shell and around drains, especially at first light. Topwaters at dawn on a glassy morning are drawing blowups, but don’t be shy about working soft plastics in glow or chartreuse on a jighead, particularly as the sun comes up and that water starts to green up near shore. Flounder have parked themselves along bayou mouths and channel edges—slow rolling a white or pink Gulp! Swimming Mullet or bouncing a live mud minnow works wonders as the tide falls. Up on the surf, the mackerel are running and slot reds are cruising the first gut. A silver spoon or a 4 1/2-inch paddletail swimbait, like the ones recommended in Bassmaster’s redfish coverage, will do you right—chuck and wind until you find the school. If you’re tossing soft plastics, natural shad and pumpkinseed are both solid choices. And remember, after a front, the windward shoreline will stack the bait—follow the birds, they know where the groceries are. Hot spots today? You can’t go wrong around the Texas City Dike, which is firing with schools of reds and trout, especially at the drop-offs along the channel side. Both the Galveston Yacht Basin and the adjacent marsh drains in West Bay are producing solid trout and the occasional doormat flounder. For land-based folks, any of the main harbor entrances—like Payco Marina or the Port of Galveston—are holding This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.