Speck hit live shrimp under a cork weekend before Tropical Storm Cindy
Perry Rosenson took a shot in the dark and made the run out to Breton Island earlier this month — and hit the bullseye with a nice 6.6-pound trout.
The 19-year-old from Metairie, along with his dad Rene, good friend Adam Durand and the two boys’ girlfriends, headed out of Hopedale Marina on June 17 and initially stopped at the MRGO rocks.
“Then the bite slowed down by the rocks, and the weather was good to go, so we were like, ‘Let’s take the run out there and try,’” Rosenson said. “My friend has never caught a big redfish before, and my dad knew the island provides big reds and trout, too.”
They arrived at Breton around 10:30 and found exactly one other boat fishing the island, so the two boys hopped out and waded the cove side using live shrimp 18 inches under a popping cork.
“We initially saw some bait running and some Spanish mackerel jumping and we got out and started fishing, and I caught a little Spanish mackerel,” said Rosenson, an incoming freshman in nursing at Southern Miss. “Right after we landed that one, I cast out a couple times and they kept taking the bait and cutting the line.”
The boys decided to switch over from kahle and J-hooks to trebles – which turned out to be the best decision of the day when the cork vanished on Rosenson’s first cast after he made the change.
“It was pulling drag so we thought it was maybe a redfish,” he said. “Adam went back to the boat to get the net and came back to me. He saw its head and thought it was a redfish.
“Then I saw the gray, and I was like, ‘That’s a freakin’ trout man!’ Sure enough, we go it closer and it was a big old trout.”
It took a while, but the pair managed to wrangle the big speck into the net.
“Adam had the net and when the fish got closer, the cork got tangled up around it. He was getting so excited when he realized it was a trout he missed netting it twice, so we pretty much both ended up scooping her up and lifting the whole net out of the water to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere,” Rosenson said with a chuckle. “It filled up the whole net. My dad was back on the boat screaming.
“Man, it was so much fun.”
The fat speck measured almost 24 inches long, and tipped Rosenson’s digital scale at 6.6 pounds. Durand never got his big red, but the group stopped back at the MRGO rocks on the way in and finished up strong with about 20 more trout to end the day.
The only downside was Rosenson hadn’t registered for the CCA Louisiana STAR Tournament, where the big speck likely would be sitting in second place now in the state’s East Division.
“I was bummed out about that,” he admitted.
But you can’t be too disappointed with a new personal-best trout — which was already filleted and eaten — especially one reeled in after taking a chance on a 45-minute run out to Breton Island.
“It’s definitely my biggest speck,” Rosenson said, noting he caught a 4-pounder when he was 12. “It will probably be a long time before I get something bigger than that.”
