Hey everyone! It’s been awhile, but I’m so glad to be back to writing. This summer took off with a bang, and it’s slowing down *briefly* enough that I can finally get in a little blogging!
If you’re not from Texas, you might have heard about the wildly hot temperatures that we’ve experienced as a state lately. Even on the coast, where the Gulf great tempers our weather, it’s been scorching.
And not just on the land! Water temperatures have also been on the rise while tides have started to fall, giving us every fisherman’s nightmare.
Not a bite in sight.
Early on in June before the heat seemed to settle in, we did get on a pretty decent trout bite for a few weeks. Croaker season was in full effect, and the speckled trout in our area were healthier and heavier than ever.
A seasoned fisherman knows after awhile what certain sizes and species of fish feel like when they get hooked; you can distinctly make out the shake of a speckled trout’s head or feel the unrelenting run of a redfish. And you get a knack for knowing about how big that fish has to be to start pulling out drag on your reel.
This year, all bets were off; I would hook into a trout shaking its mighty head and manhandling me all over the boat. My mind would be racing while I worked to keep the rod tip up; this is a big one, this has got to be upper slot! The fish would get closer to the boat, fighting and fighting…
And we’d pull in a little 16″ trout that we couldn’t even keep!
Even my tried and true croaker fishing timing had started to fail me; typically, when I’m croaker fishing, I’ll let the trout take the bait for about 12 seconds before I set the hook. It’s enough time for them to get hooked without getting gut hooked.
Well, not anymore!
I watched my hook get stripped several times before I amended my timing to about 5 seconds. And at that point, it was game on; any fish I could hook, I could land. As long as the bite lasted early in June, we pulled in almost exclusively upper slot fish and it was such a joy to see this species thriving after being decimated by the freeze in 2021.
The speckled trout of the Laguna Madre in Texas are a true testament to the power of Mother Nature. In the same way that wild fires clear the land for new, healthier growth, that freeze allowed for a healthier population of speckled trout to grow in our area. Where they were once almost too plentiful, now there is plenty of food for them to grow bigger and stronger. In my 7 years of fishing this area, these are the by far the healthiest fish I’ve ever seen.
And with the new limits in place, we’re seeing bigger fish caught every year. Before the freeze in 2021, the range was 15″ to 25″, and you could keep 1 oversized trout per day. After the freeze, they shortened the range to 17″ to 23″, and no oversized fish could be kept. As you might imagine, there was some serious backlash about the range (especially since the fish breeding the most are typically within that size range!), but I think there has been a benefit to the limit.
You hear it in deer hunting all the time; “let them grow up”. Let the young deer go so they can get bigger before they’re harvested. For the first time in a long time, the trout have been allowed to grow up to be those large 25+” fish that were becoming less common over the years. My husband has his heart set on catching a trophy sized trout at 30″ someday and I think his chances will be better than ever.
Until the heat fades and the water levels rise, though, it’ll be awhile before any of us down here are having super productive days on the water! Fishing has been tough the last couple of years, but if there’s anything we learn while fishing, it’s resilience and patience. As someone who is hopelessly hooked on fishing, I’m willing to wait and try again.
Jess and the Outdoors 