Salinity and Speckled Trout

Photo courtesy of Austin Angel fishing with Capt. Brent Juarez

Salinity and Speckled Trout

With heavy rains a lot has been learned this past year on how speckled trout cope with freshwater inflow into an estuary or bay complex. I think it pleasantly surprised many of us and frustrated many others at the same time. A lot of people did not go fishing until the bays “prettied up.” Those that went had probably one of the best years inside of the last 20 years of catching speckled trout.

The old salts who knew were out there. They have learned to basically ignore surface conditions and keep looking for the signs. The fish will show where they are, and you’ll catch them there. While that seems like a rather simplistic view, it means those who chose to get on the water and go hunt for the fish found them, and often found them very concentrated.

Capt. Brent Juarez fished on the Gulf Coast in Texas in the Galveston Complex including East Bay exclaimed all spring and summer, “It was just almost stupid some days because the fish were so stacked up.”

And they were really good fish too. Those that caught fish fished deep structure and worked it very tight to the bottom… too little weight or too fast a presentation and you didn’t catch fish. It was better to be fishing with a little too much weight and deal with the occasional hang up.

Many Gulf Coast and East Coast estuaries are currently dealing with high freshwater flows again after heavy fall rains have continued to dump loads of freshwater into rivers and bays. Much of the water has yet to reach the bays at the time of this writing, and a wet winter could continue the trend. A rule of thumb, don’t let the surface salinity dictate if you are going to fish or not. That said, there is a fine line between a fresh surface and “totally blown out.” The fine line is where you are going to find your fish stacked up, be it cold winter fishing deep, spring hot spots or this coming summer. If the entire water column is fresh all the way to the bottom, you won’t find any trout there… but as the daily incoming salt-laden tide drives a wedge up under that freshwater, in some areas you will find trout in the lower water column where there is a minimum salinity for them in the 1-5ppt (MSU) range.

I’m not advocating that you go out hunting trout with a salinity meter. Just go hunt the signs of speckled trout such as slicks and baitfish numbers in the right habitat areas like deep oyster reefs, structure or dropoffs, and probe the depths with the lures you have confidence in. Fish tight to the bottom, and move around until you start getting strikes. You’ll eventually find them stacked up!

Article Submitted by Sun Coast Marine Works LaMarque, Texas field staff.