One of the best ways to catch speckled trout during the transition days of August is to fish for something other than speckled trout.
It sounds like a ridiculous strategy, but across the coast late last summer, anglers boated nice hauls of specks while fishing for redfish.
Radio and television show host Kevin Ford made a trip out of Cocodrie late last August with Capt. Coby Esponge, and they motored up to the marshes near Pointe aux Chenes to catch some redfish.
“We had a strong wind out of the north until about noon, so we had to head into the marsh,” Ford said.
They got there to find the water high and just barely trickling out. The action was slow until the tide began falling at a good clip, and then the redfish went crazy.
“That was all we needed — for that water to fall,” Ford said.
The anglers knew that a falling tide would work in their favor for the reds. What surprised them, though, was the quality of the trout they caught mixed in with the reds.
“We caught six or seven,” Ford said, “and they were all nice.”
Capt. C.T. Williams had a similar trip last August with Capt. Bobby Gros in Leeville.
The redfishing had been strong in the Leeville area for the previous few months, but it really picked up there when the calendar turned to August.
In fact, avid kayak fisherman Gairi Williamson of Kenner was taking every chance he got last August to throw his Hobie into the marshes near Leeville on the west side of Highway 1, and catch easy limits of eating-sized reds.
But both Williamson and Gros found more trout than you\’d expect to find in the marshes in August.
“Under normal circumstances, the end of September is when trout push back into the marshes, but last year, we started catching trout in early August, and that was unusual to see the number of trout and the size of them,” Gros said. “We were catching some throwbacks, but at the same time, we were catching some up to 18, 19 inches in the marsh.”
The bite isn\’t one where you can expect to go into the ponds and come out with a limit of specks, but last August, Gros kept coming across little points in the ponds that would have five or six keepers on them.
And there are always plenty enough redfish to keep you entertained in between.
It beats the heck out of running to the big bays, burning a tanker truck of gas, battling sharks and coming home fishless and frustrated.
It\’s the transition. That means the best way to catch trout may be to not fish for them at all.
For more information, call Gros at 985-637-0118 or Esponge at 985-594-9074.