The Texas coast plays host to an extraordinary diversity of fish habitat. The Laguna Madre from Port Isabel to Mansfield is a clear, shallow turtle grass flat dotted with sand bars and potholes. The intracoastal waterway cuts through the Laguna and provides deep cover for fish to hide from extreme heat and cold, as well as moving tidal waters in and out of the Laguna. Further north, the unique geography of Baffin bay and its legendary “rocks” seems to be the ultimate stomping ground for Texas’ biggest speckled trout, as well as giant schools of reds and black drum. Corpus Christi Bay represents the first of the large, deepwater bays that is spotted with grass flats and oyster reefs alike. It is open to the Gulf of Mexico at both the Port Aransas and Packery jetties, introducing a diversity of offshore species into the bay system such as snapper, mackerel, and tarpon. The Nueces river, which also enters Corpus Christi Bay through Nueces Bay, provides lower salinity levels and nourishes the oyster reefs that become plentiful in the northern range of the Texas gulf coast. It is the first in a series of rivers including the Mission, Aransas, Guadalupe, Colorado, Trinity and Sabine which help to maintain the brackish nature of the bays and change the look of the Texas coast. (more…)