Transition Trout

Soft plastic baits score big on west coast specks as they gather in early spring.

By Jon West

These are menacing trout. Every one of them is pushing the 5- to 6-pound envelope with gaping yellow maws, sagging bellies and the appetites of fish many times their size.

They're cruising in small pods, protecting a specific parcel of turtle grass as though their lives depended on it. I can see them, Ed can see them and for a glorious moment last winter, they were eating our lures as if they had never seen a plastic worm in their lives.

On repeated drifts that covered about 100 yards, every cast within an exact 150-square-foot area drew a strike.

We fished your basic patch of broken bottom--no large potholes but several sandy patches interspersed with grassy patches. Not too far away was a shoreline oyster bar, the mouth of a dock-lined residential canal and a 6- or 8-foot channel. The Anclote River Power Plant loomed nearby.

In a sense, the spot had everything to offer a fish that had just spent the winter holed up in the stagnant water of a residential canal. Deep (warmer) water was nearby in case a late season cold front blew the fish off the flats. The surrounding grass and adjacent oysters were providing cover for large schools of finger mullet that were subsequently providing food for the trout. In these times of pre spring warmth, the shallow is known by my guide to warm up quickly with the rising sun. By 1 or 2 p.m., the flat is often seven or eight degrees warmer than it was at sunrise.

The area was a veritable smorgasbord of life.

One hundred yards to my left, glass minnows clouded anonymous patches of flat where schools of ladyfish played bully. But just off the bow, in the aforementioned area, nervous skitters of vulnerable mullet screamed for the obligatory topwater.

Two years ago, I might have tied on a Bill Norman RatLure, a Bagley's Finger Mullet or maybe a 5M MirrOlure. Today it's a jerkbait worked in a slow but radical, manner that the trout are jumping all over. The strikes came without hesitation, in full view.

At one moment, I was staring at a school of big trout, one of which just took a swipe at my Slam 'R. One of a variety of jerkbaits now flooding the saltwater market. He missed it with a noisy splash at the top and the others began circling aggressively. Just 10 feet from the end of my rodtip were three quality trout fighting over my wormlike lure. I was almost too worked up to react when a fourth fish bolted in out of nowhere and sucked up my bait.

Almost.

"Whoa!" I hollered, as 22 inches of speckled madness shook its head and did a dandy tailwalk within handshake distance of the boat. "Where did that fish come from?"

In the bow, Capt. Ed Walker was bowed up with a fat trout of his own--a fish he'd spotted in another school of three or four cruising the edge of a pothole. I landed and released my fish quickly and settled in to watch Walker handle his, a true gator of the yellow-mouthed, fatbelly persuasion.

"These fish are soupy in here," said Walker. "Look at them over there."

He was pointing at a small pothole 20 yards away where six or seven specks were cruising away from us. They weren't in a hurry, but the sound of their brethren doing the headshakes on the surface was definitely making them a little uncomfortable.

"Before the net ban," said Walker, "this school of fish would have lasted about one day out here."

Call these fish trout in transition--transition from the deepwater refuges of winter to the warming flats of spring and transition from a habitat dominated by miles of monofilament mesh to a sanctuary where their success is almost guaranteed by strict size and bag limitations and now a 2-month closed season.

I guess you could also call them happy trout.

From the tower of his 21-foot Hydraskiff, Walker can see them all. He recently acquired the tower boat and uses it exclusively when searching for new areas to fish. His running perch some six feet above the normal line of sight on a flats skiff has opened up a panorama he didn't have before. Now, much like the gill netter who used a bow perch to spot fleeing trout--or mullet or sheepshead or pompano and permit--before wrapping them up in monofilament, Walker can cruise the shallows looking for fish before he casts.

"That's how the netters wiped out all the trout," says Walker, who has had more than his share of run-ins with the gill net crowd. "They'd get up in the bow or on a tower and just cruise around looking for those trout. As soon as they spot a few they'd drop the lead and wrap 600 yards of net around them. They'd just kill 'em. I've seen guys make a 500-pound set in an area about twice the size of your living room. They could wipe out a whole flat in five minutes."

Walker's blood pressure is more stable these days partly due to the net ban and partly to trout fishing.While the Palm Harbor guide makes the meat of his living during tarpon season, there's something about a 6-pound trout that sets him off.

Transition Trout

"These big fish are just so awesome," said Walker, pulling a specimen of nearly seven pounds into the boat for a quick release. "Their colors are so intense and they just flat out eat a bait. If trout got over 50 pounds I think that would be the end of redfish and snook."

Part of his love affair with the speck is also one of attrition. For several years, finding a trout over 14 inches on the flats of west central Florida was a cause for celebration.

"Oh, we'd catch a few with those funny rings around their necks, but that was it, said Walker. "And you might find a few big ones in the power plant or back in some canal. I can't tell you how many hours I wasted looking for trout on the flats even when I knew half a dozen netters were working the area. Wishful thinking I guess."

To understand the susceptibility of trout to commercial and subsequently recreational anglers (granted the weapons and limits are slightly different), one must understand the behavior patterns of trout. The nature of the fish makes them slightly easier to catch than redfish or snook. Unlike a redfish or linesider that will flush out and get lockjaw if you spook them, a jilted trout won't run far when you push him out of his house. And even more importantly, the fish you run over in a boat are fishable within 10 or 15 minutes.

This doesn't mean it's okay to run all over the flats spooking fish, but it does allow you a margin of error.

"You run over some reds or snook and it's going to be a few hours before you can get them to even look at a bait," said Walker, who also admits that he's had clients catch snook on casts they make after he's fired up his motor. "But that's just fishing," he added. "Trout are a little more forgiving. You can run over a pile of trout, head upwind a few hundred yards and drift back down and get them to eat."

Another tidbit of trout behavior is their affinity for bunching up in schools--especially in the late winter and early spring--While there may be very few anglers who have ever seen a school of trout, chances are, more and more will be seeing them in years to come. I remember spotting large schools in the late '70s and early '80s on a regular basis during flats adventures with my dad and have seen small schools a few times since. But it was like deja vu standing on the bow of Walker's skiff while dozens of big fish flowed by.

Crucial to this aggregation of big fish is the water temperature on the flats. If the water is below 60 degrees, the only fish in the shallows are likely to be redfish and sheepshead. Once the mercury climbs over 61 or 62, the trout start showing up in skinny water in big numbers. Then, with two or three days of sunshine to push the temperature near 64 or 65 degrees, the action peaks. Once the water temperature climbs above 70 or 72 degrees, the action just drops off. Walker still catches the occasional big fish, but the marauding packs of fish drawn by cooler thermoclines are gone.

Walker also notes that these fish are often fat with roe in preparation for a summer spawn and strongly advises catch and release.

"I do a little selective breeding," joked Walker. "These big trout are on top of the gene pool producing more big trout. If a customer has to eat a trout, we'll keep a 15- or 16-incher and let the gators reproduce."

Obviously, Walker knows of several areas where he consistently finds big trout. But since he acquired his tower skiff, he's discovered wads of trout in places he's never even before had a bite.

One such area he discovered while running from spot to spot between the Anclote and Cotee rivers. While cruising the shallows he spotted a school of big fish but he was snook fishing. Instead of stopping to work the fish, he simply logged lat-longs on his GPS as he ran by.

For a month he made the run regularly, and hit the GPS whenever he sighted trout. After programming 10 or 11 numbers, his machine spit out a plot of each spot that revealed some surprising information--the wad of fish had not moved more than a few hundred feet.

"I couldn't believe it," said Walker. "The area has since become one of my favorites for nailing those big trout in early spring."

Subsequently he has found so many new areas full of big fish that he's come up with some theories on trout behavior. The information translates into a couple of solid rules he follows to find big trout.

"If when running the flats you see one nice fish, don't bother with it. If you see two or more fish, swing upwind, give the fish some time, then drift back down on them. That is the Two Trout Rule."

"And don't stop if all you see are small trout," he continued. "Very rarely will you catch trout over three pounds in a mixed crowd."

Another application of the Two Trout Rule relates to how hard you should fish a particular area. If you drift an area and catch one trout, check out another spot. If you catch two, the skipper says, the area might be worth another drift.

Says Walker, "It's the Two Trout Rule, and it almost always works."

When the trout first start moving on the flats, Walker notices their affinity for muck-bottom flats where bottom there is dark and warms quickly. Areas tucked in backbays that don't get a lot of tidal flow warm up fast, too, and see little pressure. Check these areas first as the water starts to warm, then hunt for trout closer to the bay or river passes as spring takes over.

What to throw when you find the fish is the simplest part of catching big trout.

Many veteran trout hunters feel jerkbaits are the only way to go. They cast a mile, which is key when you're easing up to a wad of trout; you can work them fast or slow, near the bottom or the top; they're soft so the fish don't spit them out.

When experimenting to find the action fish want on a given day, start with a slow, erratic retrieve that falls and rises through the water column. This is more attractive to trout than the walking retrieve preferred by reds and snook.

Walker rigs his Slam R' (made by 12 Fathom) Texas-style, with the point of a 3/0 or 4/0 worm hook buried in the bait. This produces a weedless bait, but as well, requires a special hooksetting procedure. Other effective plastics come from Bass Assassin, Culprit and Zeta, to name just a few.

When the fish hits, you need to trash the quick-strike mentality and allow the fish to eat the bait. A couple seconds delay, followed by a hard, solid set with a stiff rod will do the trick. If you miss the fish the first time, be patient--you'll probably get a second chance.