‘Confusion state’ rules for specks, guide says
October can be a tricky month for fishing. It’s certainly a whole lot easier than September, but locating fish still can be a challenge.
Delacroix guide Capt. Casey Brunning finds speckled trout not yet fully inside, but more so in the fringe bays this month.
“They’re in that confusion state of, ‘I want to be inside, but I’m not sure I want to be inside,’ so it’s more the south end of Four Horse, south end of Lake Robin, Round Lake — areas like that.”
When he gets in these locations, Brunning always keeps his eyes peeled for prey.
“There’s a good bit of bait,” he said. “That’s a lot of what the fish will follow in is the shrimp coming inside. You can find the shrimp coming out the water in certain places where the tide’s running right and hit a gold mine.”
Upon arrival to the fringe lakes and bays, Brunning likes to focus his efforts around points.
“We’ll start off on points either that I know have shells below them, or that the tide’s creating some sort of tide line around the point creating a turbulence for bait to get hung up in,” he said.
The size of the speckled trout, Brunning said, can be really impressive this month.
“You can catch really big fish in October on the outside — the bigger bays closer to the outside waters,” he said. “What I’ve found is when you’re in school trout in October, you have to move a little further south.
“If you’re on the north side of Lake Robin and you’re catching one keeper for every 25 trout, you need to get to the south side of Robin.”
When targeting strictly big fish, Brunning throws nothing but topwater baits. He likes the Matrix Mullet and Rapala Skitter Walk. If he’s looking for numbers of fish, he throws both live shrimp and Matrix Shad under a popping cork.