Targeting schooling spike winter speckled trout is fun, but many anglers are willing to sacrifice quantity for quality. That means they are after big speckled trout. To consistently target such larger specks you have to go about things a little bit differently than those who are looking for continuous action.
The biggest winter speckled trout have many things in common: they are all female, they prefer big fish over shrimp, and they feed at night as much or more than they do in the day. They are also slower, less aggressive, and very wary.
Use big baits to catch big specks
Big female trout can fairly be called lazy. They will try to do the least they can get away with and still enjoy a nice meal. Hence, big trout hit very big baits.
They like to eat bigger shrimp than smaller trout do, and studies have even shown that at some point larger trout start eating more baitfish than shrimp. They will even eat little trout, which may be why the classic speck-looking black-spotted MirrOlure has been a favorite lure of trout anglers for decades.
This size preference means you should up the size of your bait, plastic, or synthetic lures, and you should give a thought to fishing plugs like those MirrOlures or other saltwater crankbaits and twitchbaits. Plugs imitate big baitfish that larger specks love to ambush and feast on for their only meal of the day.
“If you want to catch bigger specks go with bigger lures and baits,” says veteran Carolina outdoors writer Mike Marsh. “I have seen many large specks with one or more pinfish inside them, and the pinfish were so big I wondered how the speck ate them. A big pinfish is one of the top trophy speck baits. If you use lures, use the larger sizes. If you use average size lures, you will catch average size fish.”
Be willing to change locations and lures to catch larger specks
Although it may be hard, it is sometimes best to leave the trout biting if you are after a big one and only catching spike trout. Specks will often stay in schools of the same size fish, which makes since for the little ones since hanging out with big momma can get you eaten.
“Biggest trout I ever caught was the only bite I had that day,” says long-time Carolina fishing guide Gordon Churchill. “To catch bigger trout you have to fish for bigger trout. If you want big ones and all you are catching are small ones then you need to do something different. Move to a different spot, try a different lure…something. Often they will all be the same size, other times you will seemingly be wading through the smaller ones to finally get a bigger one.”
Fish structure (slowly) for big trout
Because large specks don’t move around nearly as much as the smaller trout, they love hard structure where they can ambush big baitfish. Bridges, docks, drop-offs, rocky areas, marsh grass points, jetties…anywhere a stealth fish could surprise a school of smaller fish is a great place to target big speckled trout.
You need to slow your retrieve down to a crawl when you are fishing winter structure for big trout. If you observe baitfish around such places in the cold water you won’t find them racing from spot to spot but instead drifting slowly with the current, looking for food and not expending a lot of energy. Sometimes a very slow retrieve with frequent pauses will entice a big winter trout that you would have missed if your plug sped by them.
Go fishing in the dark for big trout
It is well known that large trout feed at night. They have excellent eyesight at night, and like most predator fish will attack a baitfish school after watching the phosphorus glow around them from below. That’s why plugs are great at night, and it means even topwater plugs can work at night. Also darker colors actually ‘stand out’ more since they have a darker profile against the natural glow.
“Night fishing and MirrOlures will often get bigger fish than soft plastics on jigs,” says Emerald Isle, NC speckled trout expert and fishing reporter Dr. Bogus. “They feed heavily at night and have great eyesight. Frequently I find fish with soft plastics or Gulp baits on a jig and then switch to MirrOlures for bigger fish.”
Be very, very quiet when speckled trout fishing
Noise is something that is often overlooked by anglers…particularly anglers in boats. Lots of noises (made by motors, mouths, or anchors) scatter winter trout quicker than a school of feeding dolphins (or close to it). That’s why so many winter fishing guides and vet trout and redfish anglers use push poles to move their boats along the waterways.
You want to be able to be quiet and you want to be able to make long casts. You can have the best lure in the world and work it with the perfect retrieve, but if the fish have fled at your approach they won’t be there to catch. Winter speckled trout are wary (remember those dolphins) and likely to see you before you see them. So stay quiet.
For many more fishing tips to help you catch speckled trout and all the Carolina inshore fish check out my blog A Dash of Salty and my new fishing book Surf and Saltwater Fishing in the Carolinas.
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