All Aboard for Specks

Come with Windsor Barrow for an unforgettable trout-trolling adventure.

The morning broke cold and clear as Windsor Barrow and his fishing partner, Elton Harrison, left New Bern, heading for the Hoboken area and the backwater bays of Pamlico Sound.

Several days before the planned trip, a friend of Barrow’s had done a little scouting for him and had placed a call to Barrow’s Snow Hill home with a report.

“A bunch of specks have moved into Goose Creek,” the reporter said.

That was the information Barrow needed. Having retired from the home-improvement business several years ago, Barrow, who now operates a hog farm in Snow Hill, doesn’t need any more urging than a good report to load up his 22-foot Crest Tripletoon and go fishing, especially if the targets are speckled trout.

More than most anglers, Barrow gets a lot of fishing reports. He has a vast network of customers who like to show their appreciation by reporting where they catch fish.

Before Barrow was a died-in the-wool trout man, he liked to fish for striped bass at John H. Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island) at the North Carolina-Virginia border. One of his favorite tactics was pulling planer boards for stripers. Seven or 8 years ago, his son introduced him to the wonderful world of inshore saltwater fishing, namely speckled trout.

“I got to thinking about how we striper fished at Kerr/Buggs and looked into trying to make something that would work for these trout,” said Barrow, who developed a plastic molded planer board that looks and functions like a cross between a bobber and a planer board.

“We started out using bobbers or corks to troll for trout, but the problem was the corks bunched up behind the boat. I wanted something that would spread the baits out.”

So Windsor’s Bobber Planer was born.

Taking a page from freshwater striper and crappie anglers, Barrow devised a system of trolling for speckled trout in Pamlico Sound and immediately began to gain some attention for the numbers and sizes trout he was catching.

“The key to this, other than the planer, is boat control,” Barrow said. “You’ve got to be able to keep the boat moving at the right speed while keeping the baits in the right location to get bites from these trout.”

Rather than trolling with the large outboard motor powering his pontoon, Barrow elects to use a double setup of trolling motors — one on the front and one at the rear. The bow-mounted trolling motor is a Minn-Kota Autopilot 65 he can steer from the pontoon’s console by foot pedal on a long cord. The purpose of the bow motor is to set the couse for the boat and provide the primary propulsion. With variable power capabilities, the trolling speed can be adjusted to whatever speed the trout like best. The second motor is a hand-controlled Motor Guide the angler uses to swing the tail of the pontoon into position when wind or current makes the large craft unruly.

Currently the health of the speckled trout population in Pamlico Sound is good. In fact if you go by the number of citations issued in 2007, it’s pretty remarkable. According to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ web site, the average numbers of citations awarded for trout more than 4 pounds between the years of 1998 and 2007 is 509 per year. In just 2007 the DMF issued a record 1,000 citations, an all-time high.

“From all accounts, things look pretty steady from last year“ DMF supervisor David Taylor said. “We’re at the point now of finishing a stock assessment that was just completed and hopefully that will confirm that things are looking good for our trout. Based on the weather through winters over the past couple of years, there’s been no indication of a cold kill, which is often attributed to a decline in the trout fishery.”

A DMF fisheries management plan was initiated in July 2007 and is currently in the process of development. The stock assessment will go a long way towards helping resource managers determine what, if any, changes will need to be made to insure the continued growth of the speckled trout fishery in Pamlico Sound and its tributaries.

“If you look at the statistics from our stock status report,” Taylor said, “it tells the story of a successful year for speckled trout anglers last year.”

According to Barrow, he has heard reports from across the state about the increased numbers and sizes of trout that users of his Bobber Planers have caught. While these reports are coastwide, Barrow still has favorite areas he’s fished productively for years.

“I look for trout in the backs and edges of the creeks that run off the Pamlico River, places like the back end of the Pamlico River and smaller creeks, such as South Creek, Oyster Creek, Upper and Lower Springs, and Goose Creek,” he said. “In fact, you can troll for trout all over the back of the sound, but these are just places I’m most familiar with.”

The fish Barrow targets hold in fairly shallow water, most of the time less than 6-feet deep. He said trolling for specks gives him an advantage because of the number of baits he can present in the strike zone at once.

“I’ll run five or six boards on each side of the boat and sometimes one or two out the back,” Barrow said.

When he’s running good, Barrow’s pontoon looks like a big aircraft carrier with a squadron of tiny, flanking PT boats. He trolls a variety of jigs behind his boards and owns a suitcase-sized tackle bag of different colors, shapes and sizes to match what the trout want that day.

Most boards carry a single 3/4-inch plastic grub that’s impaled on a 1/8- or ¼-ounce short-shanked jighead. He favors Honey Hole grubs and Gotcha Little Fishies and his favorite colors are green, chartreuse or metal flake.

“The jigs run about 3 to 4 feet below and slightly behind the board,” he said. “I put each board out in order, starting from the back, which is the farthest away and to the side of the boat. Then I space each additional board 4 to 5 feet in from the last board I put out.”

The result is a V formation with the farthest board 40 feet to the side and the closest 10 feet from the gunwales.

“I prefer to troll with the wind because it seems like that triggers more strikes,” Barrow said. “I believe trout generally face into the wind that’s pushing food to them.”

Barrow’s trolling speeds are in the 1- to 2 ½-mph range. He judges his speed by what the fish want and judges how fast he’s going by watching his movement past creek banks. Tide is generally not a factor in the back areas of Pamlico Sound, as the tide may only rise a few inches between cycles.

“A strong northeast wind will bring in more water than the tide,” he said.

Barrow uses medium-action spinning rods spooled with 10- pound-test line. Each rod is placed in a Driftmaster rodholder mounted at the rear and backquarters of his boat, putting anglers in the middle of the action without having to move too much when a rod goes down. That’s a frequent occurrence when conditions are right.

“There is a 12-inch minimum-size limit for speckled trout in N.C. waters, and the creel limit is 10 per person,” he said.

Like all members of the drum family, mature speckled trout males produce a drumming sound to attract females during the spawning season.