Today was another “specktacular” day of speckled trout fishing – and i took out Joey and Don in order to teach them a bit about both navigating the marshes and pulling those specks in on artificials.
Like the day before, we were catching fish within minutes of pulling up to the first hole. Within the first 2 hours, we boated around 30-40 fish in the 12-16inch class. It was pretty automatic with these guys – cast, wait 5 seconds and WHAM! Fish on! Again, it was a little difficult to locate the bigger fish but these guys are really scrappy on light tackle. We moved on to a few more spots and ended up catching another 15-20 fish throughout the day with the “high tide” fish averaging in the 14-16inch range. We did pull the hooks on some good fish but these guys were having so much fun with the spikes that they didn’t even need to roam in search of the “bigguns.” These boys kept close to their limit but released the vast majority of the fish – many of the fish didnt even need to be handled to be unhooked so we only kept the fish that i had to hold to remove the hook.
When it comes to handling and releasing specks – use a rubber landing net and try to handle the fish as little as possible (and if you do – do so with wet hands) – removing their slime coat can easily kill these guys so the key is to minimize their “slime damage.”
Today the fish were very agressive in the morning (often slamming baits on the surface and within site of the boat) but wanted an extremely slow retrieve come mid-morning.
Always great to have excellent anglers on board and I look forward to seeing you boys come STRIPER season!
