Fishing / How you can fish
How you can fish.
Texas is specific about how you can catch fish. Most prize fish are pole-and-line only, but there are legal nets, lines, and even hand fishing for catfish. Here's the plain version.
Legal devices and what they're for
Cast net
For nongame fish, crabs, crayfish, and shrimp - often used to catch bait.
Gig
A pronged spear on a pole, for nongame fish - and flounder during the open flounder season.
Bow fishing
For nongame fish only, like carp and gar. A popular Texas night sport.
Gaff
Only to help land a fish you hooked legally - never to keep an undersize, oversize, or protected fish.
Hand fishing (noodling)
Catching channel, blue, and flathead catfish with your bare hands, in freshwater only.
Jugline
Freshwater only - a floating line with 5 or fewer hooks and a gear tag.
Throwline
Freshwater only - like a jugline but tied to a fixed point, 5 hooks or fewer.
Trotline
A long line with more than 5 hooks and a gear tag. Freshwater limits: 50 hooks max, 600 feet max, hooks at least 3 feet apart. On a saltwater trotline you can't keep redfish, trout, or sharks.
Sail line
A wind-powered saltwater-only line. Unlike a trotline, it can keep redfish, seatrout, and sharks.
A few more rules
- You can use more than one pole - except on Community Fishing Lakes and on docks, piers, jetties, or other manmade structures inside state parks, where it's two poles max.
- In freshwater, you can't fish with more than 100 hooks on all your gear combined.
- Set-out gear like juglines, throwlines, and trotlines must carry a gear tag with your name and address (or customer number) and the date you set it.
- In freshwater you can generally use goldfish, common carp, and native shrimp, crabs, crayfish, and sunfish as live bait - but some counties have special bait rules, and you can't move live bait fish in water from the lake where you caught them (see invasive species).
Keep going
Official sources
Legal gear and methods come from Texas Parks & Wildlife. Confirm the rules for your water and gear before you set out.
- Data vintage:
- Built on the 2025-2026 license year
- Last reviewed:
- June 15, 2026
- TPWD Legal Devices, Methods & Restrictions - Legal gear and how it may be used
- TPWD Bow Fishing Regulations
Caution: Device rules and pole-and-line-only waters can change. The official TPWD pages are the final word.