Summertime Speckled Trout Fishing Techniques

Speckled trout fishing is indeed the most favorite fishing game when it comes to lake fishing. Speckled trout, which has many different names like the specks, sea trout, paper-mouths and yellow-mouths are easily found all through the entire gulf coast and prefer to prey on small crustaceans, shrimp and small fishes like croakers and pogies. Their favorite places that meet their need are shallow coastal areas, bays and lakes with sandy and sludge bottoms.

Specks are easily identified from their silver color with olive-green tones on its back and a lot of small black dots which extend all the way over the back fin until the tail. It possesses a larger lower jaw compared to the upper jaw with two major canine teeth. Specks have usually an extended body with an average size of 14 – 18 inches long and 1 – 3 pounds weight. The excitement of speckled trout fishing lies in the wild behavior of the speck when it gets caught as an effort to get its freedom back.

The best time to fish this speck is during summer, which is in May to July. At this time the specks are in their breeding season and start moving into the estuary with the main goal to seek for food. You can easily find plenty of speckled trout which are ready to catch anything they consider as their favorite food. You can apply several fishing techniques to get the utmost of this good timing, which should be drift fishing, bottom fishing, wading and surf fishing

DRIFT FISHING could be applied over oyster beds, plane sands and stony bottoms. In coastal areas with plenty of oilfields such as in South Louisiana bays you can apply this technique near the oilfield tank batteries or its related structures. The best bait for specks is the minnow imitation or split-tail beetle.

To find the specks, you can begin from the surface and go down to the bottom. Depending on the wind and stream conditions, the speck may be positioned closely beneath the surface or place themselves at a mid level depths. During rough conditions, specks will tend to go deeper and gather together near or on the bottom.

BOTTOM FISHING is another effective technique, especially using live bait such as croakers, pogies, shrimps and minnows. Hook the live bait with #5 or #6 kale hooks through the back fin or lips. Avoid using any weight to make it possible for the life fish to move and swim freely. When fishing in deep water or in strong shallow water streams you can use the Carolina rig and a small weight of ¼ or ½ oz to keep the live bait on the bottom. In the case you are fishing in the South Louisiana coastal areas near the oil fields, you can try to focus to bottom fishing close to the deeper oilfield constructions in the open or inland bays to assure more success.

WADING AND SURF FISHING technique is very well accepted and productive if applied to location such as south Louisiana's barrier islands. Specks are plentiful all along the chain of islands and can be caught in huge quantities on the bay and the back side.

To be successful in surf fishing you have to understand on how to read the water which is the signs of the presence of game fishes. Some common examples of those signs include the presence of feeding seagulls as well as the floating oil slicks.

The presence of seagulls clearly indicates that there are plenty of fish below the location of the flying seagull.

The presence of seagulls clearly indicates that there are plenty of fish below the location of the flying seagull. The same thing is indicated by the presence of feeding pelicans if any. While the presence of oil slicks is due to the overfeeding act of the game fish with live bait fishes which then will be disgorged and appears as an oily substance on the surface. You can also sense a sweet smell close to the area of these oily slicks. The ability to read such sign will be very beneficial in catching plenty of speckled trout. So, do not miss it.