Speckled Trout Fishing

I took some friends out fishing last Friday (June 5th, 2009); Bud Baker who manages The Dunes Condo’s & Chuck Lamb who is a Professor at TCU. We had a lot of fun and thought I would share a little about our fishing trip.

I talked with Captain John Little and he suggested that we try Center Reef, Tide Gage Bar and then Cat Head. I hadn’t ever taken my boat (Blazer Bay) to Baffin Bay and figured now would be as good of time as any. WE stopped off at Clem's for some Shrimp, Piggy Purch and Croaker.

So we cruised on down to Center Reef to try out this new fishing spot and see if it lived up to the hype. We arrived making a soft approach before power poling to our first spot of the day. Bud hooked his first croaker through the belly and tossed his line out in the water by the reefs. Slam… FISH-ON. Bud pulled in a nice 22” fat trout that made us all feel pretty good about our first fishing spot. Over the next hour we pulled in a few more nice speckled trout.

Had to laugh when I was holding another trout that Bud caught through the gills & tail and preparing to measure him. The trout had other ideas about being measured and started to FLIP and FLOP right out of my hands on to the deck of boat. I then proceeded, in an attempt to preserve Bud’s catch, to perform a Belly Flop on to the deck in a failed attempt in keeping him from FLOPPING out of boat. I had lost the fish. Bud & Chuck gave me high scores for the Belly Flop and were hoping one of the other boats around us caught it on tape.

The wind had died down to almost zero making the waters very calm and real hot in the boat midday. We decided to move on down to Tide Gage Bar where we found a spot to power pole. This area is best for wade fishing and the water was still real calm so we decided to have lunch. Bud had made some nice gourmet sandwiches with chips. Discussing what our next fishing spot stop should be. We decided on Rocky Slough to rap up the day.

We arrived at Rocky Slough softly approached our fishing spot and power poled down. We had more success with some nice fat Speckled Trout in the first couple of minutes. SWEET! This didn’t last long as we started to get a lot of Skip Jack. We caught a few Rat Reds and decided to call it a day since we had a good stringer of Specks.

I was real happy that we did well on a maiden voyage to Baffin Bay on my new Blazer Bay. Great day on the water with some friends, laughter, and bait on the hook. It doesn’t get much better then that.

Next week we hope to try out some fishing spots up North.