An 8-inch speckled trout wouldn’t even warrant a measure in any state where they’re found, even in Louisiana, where the minimum legal size, for the time being at least, remains 50 percent longer than that.
But when it comes to white shrimp, one that large would be gigantic.
According to NOAA Fisheries, 8 inches is just about the longest white shrimp yet, but their importance to Louisiana’s anglers can’t be measured by inches and a ruler. They are small in stature, but huge in importance.
After being spawned in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico in spring and summer, larval and post-larval white shrimp make their way into Louisiana’s extensive wetlands, where they spend the warm-weather months gobbling up detritus, microorganisms, micro-invertebrates and even tiny fish.
They turn that energy into shrimp flesh, growing rapidly and preparing themselves physically for their annual autumn migration out to the Gulf to spawn and create next year’s crop of white shrimp.
For anglers who are fish-starved after the transition of August and September, that move is like an early Christmas present in South Louisiana waters.
Still an easy catch
Even though it’s a pale shadow of its former self, coastal fishing in South Louisiana is easier than falling off a horse when compared to other states, and that’s never more true than when white shrimp ride the conveyor belt of falling autumn tides out to the big bays and Gulf.
Speckled trout, and other greedy predators like redfish, flounder and white trout, wait with their maws open at the mouths of trenasses and minor and major bayous for Mother Nature to spoon-feed them delicious protein that will make them fat and sustain them through the lean winter months.
Diving seagulls often reveal the locations of the frenzy, but even when they’re not present, productive areas are easy to find in the fall. Just hit enough drains, and you’ll run across fish.
That happened to me just a couple weeks ago when I was shooting an episode of Marsh Man Masson. I saw five or six gulls that weren’t really working but looked particularly interested in the mouth of a 10-foot-wide bayou draining into a large lake.
Though the birds weren’t enthusiastic, the spot looked intriguing, so I pulled over to make a few casts. My Versamaxx Bolt barely even hit the water on my first cast before it plunged beneath the surface, and speckled trout No. 1 of the day hit the deck of my Avid.
Fish on every cast
I proceeded to catch fish on almost every cast, using both the cork rig and a tight-lined Holy Joely-colored Matrix Shad on a ¼-ounce Deathgrip Jighead.
The whole time I fished, white shrimp exploded from the surface, fleeing for their very lives from the marauding hordes of speckled trout below.
It’s a scene that’s duplicated over and over again this time of year, and it’s what makes fall fishing so special.
Plan your trips around a falling tide in the fall, and when you plop your ice chest down near the cleaning table at the marina, you won’t feel like 8 inches is all that big.
