A claim of the “best” of anything always requires further explanation, so let me explain how I define the best season for speckled trout fishing. It will be a season when I have the opportunity to catch larger trout, fish in a location that doesn’t require a long boat ride and I can catch them with techniques that makes the fishing most exciting. Wintertime speckled trout fishing checks all these boxes.
Trout habitat
I believe that most trout anglers in Louisiana understand that trout move within the habitat seasonally due to spawning, but as a refresher, in our estuary trout move outward or generally southward to reach higher salinity water for spawning, which happens from May until September.
Therefore, when winter arrives the trout are free to live wherever they would like, and many trout like the upper estuary. Because of the high amount of land loss in Louisiana’s marshes, there is not the structural cover in the southern marshes like in the past. Several decades ago there were protected waters further south where trout could spend the winter in deep channels with shallow water nearby. That has changed, and as a result more trout are coming further inland in the winter.
Foraging options for trout
Winter brings big changes to the diet of speckled trout in Louisiana. Most notably in winter is the absence of large shrimp numbers in the upper estuary. This is because maturing shrimp migrate out of the marshes in warmer weather. For brown shrimp, spring is the start of the migration season, and the white shrimp migration occurs from late summer and into the fall.
Therefore by January, the average speckled trout is primarily eating finfish such as mullet, shad, silversides, sheepshead minnows, croakers and others. Large trout have a diet more dependent on finfish anyway, so for them the winter diet is not a major adjustment.
Locating winter trout
I choose to target large wintertime trout at the edges of deep channels and especially where hard structure exists. This hard structure can be rip-rap, rock armoring, pilings or concrete structures.
There are shallow water areas that will hold large trout even though the hard structure is absent, but these areas hold trout best when submerged aquatic vegetation (grass) is present. Unfortunately, grass is vulnerable to damage by storm surges, salinity spikes and marsh erosion. Many shallow areas I typically fish in winter currently do not have good grass in them, and so for the last two winters the number of trout holding in these is significantly lower than when the grass was present. Fortunately, there are other beneficial habitat nearby where trout have moved, such as rock shorelines and channel drop-offs.
Wintertime trout sizes
In the areas where I fish in the winter, big trout start at 20 inches and top out at 24 inches, but there is the occasional unicorn trout caught which expands the top size by several inches. Juvenile and school-sized trout are also present but typically not in the same local area as the large trout. This makes it easier to target large trout or go for a limit of smaller trout.
One example of this is present along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) channel where I can catch 20-inch trout against the rock shoreline with jerkbaits, but if I turn around and throw a jig toward the open channel, I can catch good numbers of 13 to 14 inch trout.
Bait options
A major change to the fishery in winter is fewer boats thanks to hunting, football and those cold morning temperatures, so we expect lighter fishing pressure in the winter. However, for many anglers a complication arises because live bait typically diminishes or disappears from many shops in winter, especially the live shrimp. This becomes a major deterrent for anglers who exclusively use live bait.
However, the lack of live bait to buy should not keep anglers from the water. Wintertime allows for some of the best artificial lure fishing. Winter is a time when big trout will readily attack hard baits with vigor. The excitement that comes with a big trout hammering a jerkbait rates high on my scale of experiences.
Adjusting for success
In wintertime, there are many possibilities for conditions to develop which will encourage trout not to feed on a particular day. This can be strong winds, low water depth, low water temperatures and high atmospheric pressure. Therefore, it improves our chances of success if we approach each day with flexibility.
For instance, when fishing shorelines it is helpful to probe the point at which your lure hits the water relative to the water’s edge. I find this most impactful along rock shorelines with moderate to steep drop-offs. Trout on any given day will not stage themselves at the same position along the shoreline.
This was particularly evident on a recent trip to the MRGO where my fishing buddy was outproducing me even though we were throwing the same jerkbaits and using roughly the same action. We eventually figured out that because he was casting his bait into the very edge of the water or even bouncing the bait off the rocks, his productivity was much higher. I was casting my bait into the water several feet from the water’s edge to avoid snags, which on other days has been effective. Apparently on this day the trout were expecting their food to be tight against the rocks and so my bait landed outside of their feeding zone.
Artificial bait selection
Hard baits are my preferred lure selection for winter trout fishing. To maximize the number of strikes on hard baits, I test a range of actions when I hit the water until I start getting feedback in the form of strikes. I suggest experimenting with the full range of actions capable from a particular lure, which could be from aggressive jerks to mostly dead sticking the lure.
My favorite hard bait is a minnow-shaped jerkbait such as the Berkley Cutter or Rapala X-Rap in either a 90mm or 110mm size. These specific models are rated for diving depths of 3 to 6 feet and suspending depths of 2 to 3 feet of water. The suspending feature allows me to stop the bait and let it drift at a productive strike depth without the danger of getting snagged on the bottom. This style of bait is also surprisingly resistant to getting snagged on rocks when in motion.
Where these lures become less productive is in water depths less than 3 feet and water deeper than approximately 8 feet. The highly productive grass flats can also make them unproductive if they are continuously hooking the vegetation. This is less problematic when the grass species are eel or turtle grass, but a major headache when widgeon grass is prevalent. Therefore, the perfect area to fish these lures is over grass beds in deeper water or along the rock shorelines of channels such as is found on the MRGO channel.
Fishing twitch baits
In winter, there are other hard baits that will match the productivity of the jerkbaits mentioned above. My friends and I have had good results fishing lipless baits, which I differentiate from jerkbaits by using the name twitch baits. An example of these is the MirrOlure MirrOdine. Most trout anglers in Louisiana use the 17MR (2 5/8-inch length) or the 27MR (3 1/8-inch length). The MirrOdines come in suspending and heavy versions. The heavy versions are labeled as 18MR and 28MR. The heavy version is a sinking bait and is quite useful when working water down to 8 or 10 feet. Another sinking twitch bait I have had good success with is the Nomad Design Madscad. All of these twitch baits can be effectively fished with moderate twitching action, given periods of dead sticking and slowly retrieved in a continuous manner.
For some reason, many Louisiana anglers I know have had more success in the winter catching big trout with the small 17MR and 18MR MirrOdines than with the larger size. It can be theorized that the trout are sometimes feeding on bait fish that fall into the 2 to 3 inch length such as silverside minnows, sheepshead minnows, immature croakers and other species. I have caught the 20-inch or longer class of trout on these small lures, but I am always nervous about the fish staying hooked because of their tiny treble hooks, so use them at your own risk.
Soft-bodied lures
Another category of lures I like to use in the winter are soft-bodied twitch baits. Examples of these, which I have used, are the Pure Flats Slick, the Paul Brown Fatboy and Softdine, Z-Man Mulletron and the Vudu Mullet. All of these baits are sinking and have unique but realistic action. The Slick lure is particularly versatile because it can be rigged weedless and with or without weight. When rigged weedless with an unweighted hook, it is an excellent choice for fishing the shallow areas where abundant grass is present.
Lure color
In wintertime in Louisiana, I like fishing baits which have green or pink. I think that the optimal color patterns have variations of color tones or even multiple colors. A few years ago on a well-known grass flat along the MRGO, the electric chicken color, which has both pink and green, was particularly productive. Last winter a color pattern of half pink and half silver worked very well for me on a Berkley Cutter jerkbait.
Great winter trout fishing in Southeast Louisiana
There are many productive winter fishing spots for speckled trout in Louisiana. Below are some of the author’s favorites.
- The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet
- The Mississippi River at Venice
- Lake Pontchartrain Basin
- The roadside marshes of Caminada Headlands
