Snakes in the surf?

[Party Barge]

I have sat on texas beaches for many years and not witnessed what I did on Sunday. Took the seine net iut with the 10 year old, started at the beach and went out about 10 feet, picked it up, and both of were like, was that a snake that just flipped out and back in the water??? Thin, maybe 18 inches long, white color. No, couldn't have been, must have been the rum from the night before. Next thing I see is a seagull fly by with one in its mouth. A little later and a seagull is chomping one on the beach. A little later, one of the small girls in our group had one wrap around her arm and freak her out. Still more in seagulls mouths when we were way out surf fishing.

Any clue? Snakes, worms, whatever, very strange.

Oh, and we caught two trout on plastics.

All off of east side of Pirates.

[finfisher]

I've never seen that before.
Can't wait to hear from the salts on the board.

[buoy37]

Sand eels?

[boom]

I'd bet eels also.

[SCHU]

eels...

[dbarham]

eels put em on a hook!

[kenny]

Yep, the surf has been full of sand eels this week.

[Swells]

Not common down south here by SPI, but sand eels might make some sense, maybe in a spawn. They make extremely good bait such as for ling. Being a former Yankee (1976, gimme a break), we fished for striped bass with eels and some of the stripers went like 40-50 pounds, which is something on a medium-heavy action trout pole. King mackerel will hit them too but being short-hitters, usually require a second assist hook on the back half of the eel. I don't see why redfish wouldn't want the smaller ones. Very cool.

[Robalo]

Sand eels. Isn't seining illegal BTW? Not sure about all seines being illegal. But I remember when you could rent a 150' seine and net a lot of trout-then the law changed and outlawed seining as I recall.

[Swells]

Seine nets are legal to 20 feet long to be used for non-game fish and must be powered by Manuel, I mean manually.

[Party Barge]

Kids love the small, 10 foot seine nets in the surf, the nice thing is when they ask you to help, and you have to get up from drinking beer in your chair, it only takes about about three tries of filling it with sargasm, they get bored and I get to sit back down and drink beer again. About an hour later, they ask again.

[reeltime]

Yep, the surf has been full of sand eels this week.

That's a good reason to throw something that resembles them.

[Borabora]

Si, sand eels. Theyre strong and tough to get off a hook too if you happen to catch one. ...slippery, get all wound up and flap. They seem to be out now but whats cool is you saw them everywhere- awareness grew. Neat.

[Milkjug]

White in color leads me to think ribbonfish? I fished the surf early this week at E. Beach and there were brown eels on the surface. Must be tough buggers because they were plentiful and right on top, but the birds were hammering all the other fish instead.

Poor pics, but you get the idea.

[Curmudgeon]

Great pix, Yan. Now, where are the recipes?