Target best weather days to up fishing odds for trout and reds in Hopedale, Delacroix

It’s transition time for the speckled trout, but fishing can be good on clear, warm days, guide says.

Gene Dugas

The trout have been sparse lately but anglers can go home with a good number if they move around and catch them on the drift.

The fishing around Hopedale has been a little spotty lately, and the stormy weather has not helped out much. Specks and reds have been landed sparingly in the lakes and marshes surrounding Hopedale and Delacroix on warmer, calmer days.

But even then it’ not a sit-in-one-spot-and-load-the-boat kind of thing.

“The key is to fish and move,” Capt. Gene Dugas of Rather Be Fishing Adventures said. “The specks have been transitioning from the marshes to the lakes, and I was actually surprised at how many fish we caught in (Lake Robin) on Friday (Feb. 15).”

Dugas ended that trip with 45 trout.

“The trout have been moving into the lakes looking for food, so during this time of year you usually won’t find 20 of them stacked up,” he said. “You really have to drift or troll, and you’ll pick them off one, two or three at a time and go back to drift again.

“Just drift and cast. If you don’t catch any in one location, then don’t hesitate to move in order to find them. That’s just how it is fishing in February”

He said another key is targeting the most-productive time of the day.

“The water started to warm up around 11 o’clock, and that’s when the fish started to go to the shallow flats to feed,” Dugas said. “That’s when the fish turned on.”

He said speckled trout have been biting on plastics under corks. His favorite colors to use are purple with chartreuse, clear with chartreuse, black with chartreuse and avocado with chartreuse.

He said the fish are still in the marsh, but should begin pushing into open-water areas of Hopedale and Delacroix, including Four Horse Lake, Lake Campo, Little Lake and Point Fienne Bay.

Redfish are just as sparse as the speckled trout at the moment, Dugas said, but they can be caught with dead shrimp under corks around drains and points that have some current.