Trout Fishing

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Often people forget about speckled trout as they usually are more focused on chasing species like tarpon and bonefish. A big mistake. Speckled trout are fun to catch, readily available, cooperative and just plain cool.

Here’s what you need to know about speckled trout fishing.

Speckled trout make their homes on the expansive seagrass meadows with white sandy potholes that can be found all over the state. These fish are primarily ambush predators and use the grass as a means of camouflage, additionally their silver and green bodies that are spattered with black polka dots help them to blend right in.

When an unwitting bait ventures into a sandhole or makes a commotion at the surface they emerge from their grassy dens, open their yellow mustard colored mouths and strike using their long front canines; one of their defining features (told you these fish were cool).

Techniques and tackle for catching speckled trout:

Speckled trout are one of the easiest fish to target. Find a seagrass meadow that has sandy potholes breaking up the bottom and cast your offering, they’ll be there. You can throw live shrimp, pinfish, greenbacks, a variety of soft plastic lures, suspending twitchbaits, topwaters and even flies.

When trout fishing we use light spinning setups, usually a 7 foot rod with a 2500 to 4000 size reel spooled with 10 to 15 pound braid and 20 to 25 pound leader. For fly rods, five to eight weights are appropriate.

What’s great about trout fishing is that many times you can catch a variety of other fish while you’re doing it. These guys share territory with ladyfish, jacks, snappers, sharks, bluefish, mackerel, tarpon, cobia and others. It is not uncommon to be targeting trout and have your offering get hammered by one of these other flats predators.

Even if you don’t get a surprise visit from any other species, trout typically school up meaning that you can catch one after another at any given spot. A day of trout fishing is never boring!

Other trout tips:

Trout can test your tackle and are known to be hard fighters that jump and head shake, putting up a great acrobatic display. When you do finally subdue one of these fish boatside, it is very important to wet your hands before handling. Speckled trout have a slime coat that protects them from bacteria and other infections, if you handle the fish with dry hands then you risk removing the slime and placing the life of the fish in jeopardy.
It is very important that you handle these fish with care because we typically do not harvest these fish. While they do have great food quality and can be prepared using a number of different applications, we treat them as a gamefish and practice catch and release.

Speckled trout are a great fish to target on any inshore charter for anglers of all skill levels and ages. Don’t forget about these awesome fish, ask about targeting trout on your next charter, I would be happy to put you on one!