FORECAST BY: Capt. Jeff Cronk
Fish’n4life Charters
WWW.NCCHARTERFISHING.COM
Ranger/Yamaha/PENN/Berkley Pro-Staff
Cell: 336-558-5697 • Home: 910-325-8194 • Email: jcronk@ec.rr.com
The cold weather has finally set in along the Crystal Coast and the big drop in temperature has chilled the backwaters down to the mid 40’s to 50 degrees. The
drop in water temperature has triggered many of our reds and trout into their favorite winter haunts. Aboard Fish’n4life we’ve been finding big schools of 20-
inch to 28-inch redfish in the bays behind our barrier islands where the incoming ocean water continually moderates the water temps. The typical school of reds
this winter is holding 100 – 500 fish, but we’ve stumbled across schools upwards of a 1000 fish the past few weeks! Anglers can expect these fish to remain in the backwaters all winter. Since the winter always brings clear water and lots of “terd moss” anglers will want to scale down the weight of their baits. My favorite winter baits include: Berkley Gulp three-inch shrimp and four-inch smelt minnows fished on a 1/16-ounce jighead and a Berkley Gulp five-inch jerkshad fished on a weightless worm hook. During extremely cold weather when these reds might turn down an artificial bait, anglers will still have good success using live mud minnows under a slip cork.
Our speckled trout along the Crystal Coast have really made a push way up our local creeks and rivers. If heading up the rivers on your next trout fishing trip, a good rule of thumb is to go far enough up the river or creek until you find brackish water. Then, fish your way up or down river from that location. These fish will move into the deeper, upper waters due to the dark muddy bottoms and the abundance of bait. They become acclimated to the fresh water and will spend the winter in these areas before moving back downwater for spring.
In our area of the coast, we’re finding some decent-sized speckled trout well up White Oak River, Queen’s Creek, and the small creeks off the waterway. Some
of my favorite baits for winter trout fishing include: Berkley Gulp four-inch Smelt Minnows, three-inch Pearl Pogies and Bett’s 1/4-ounce Halo Shad and Halo
Shrimp. The key to fishing these deep, stagnant waters is to fish very slowly and allow your bait to suspend momentarily between short, sharp twitches. My general rule of thumb for these light baits is to allow one second per each foot of water depth for the bait to sink before twitching the bait. Speckled trout will almost always strike with a vengeance during that suspension time. Regardless of what species you’re targeting this winter, remember to check the current regulations on the NCDMF website.