Crystal Coast waters are the headquarters for gator trout this month.
Four Octobers ago, two fishermen from New Bern and a friend met for a fishing trip to the North River near Beaufort.
Once the guide and his party figured out what lure was the hottest — an Old Bayside 4-inch Mud Minno Spadetail in root bear/gold — the action was, to put it mildly, incredible. The trio landed around 100 speckled trout in about two hours. The only problem was, the specks were small, from 1½ to 2½ pounds.
A few years later, on a trip to a different creek with Brian Harrington — one of George Beckwith’s Down East Guide Service stable of fishing experts — a different group of anglers found the fishing not quite as steady. But the slowness of the bite — which wasn’t that slow — was compensated for by the size of the trout they caught. They were consistently bragging sized, some even better — perfect for fryin’pan or grilled filets — and some reaching citation proportions: five pounds or larger.
It was another speck-tacular trip to the Morehead City/Beaufort area in the month leading up to Halloween.
Harrington said October is a prime month for specks because it’s when the first cooling weather systems begin to move through North Carolina. And falling water temperatures trigger migrations of baitfish, which causes fish such as speckled trout to follow them.
“It’s no secret; where the baitfish go, that’s where the specks — and reds and flounder — will be, along with just about anything else,” said Harrington (252-617-3474).
As the winter approaches, the supply of bait will dwindle, so specks must take in a good supply of nutrition to make it through the lean months. And that makes October event better; specks are eager to attack lures and live bait — especially BIG live baits.
“The baitfish begin to move down the (Intracoastal) Waterway as the temperature drops,” said Harrington, a 34-year-old Morehead City native who has been guiding since he was 11 and who obtained his captain’s license his junior year at West Carteret High School.
Actually, the baitfish and gamefish begin to move as early as September. Capt. Dave Dietzler of Cape Lookout Charters (252-240-2850) calls the the change the “mullet blows.”
“The first good northeast wind of September is a mullet blow, and it gets everything moving,” he said.
Even though spotted sea trout aren’t the largest fish that swim in the ocean — and big baits almost universally attract bigger fish — they really like shrimp better than anything. And the bigger the better.
Harrington knew that and was ready when a trio of anglers met him at the Morehead City waterfront before dawn.
“Look at this,” he said, opening his bait well.
Inside wriggled hundreds of the biggest shrimp the anglers had ever seen, monsters that measured six to eight inches long and whose bodies were nearly as thick as two fingers taped together.
“That’s what the big specks like, big shrimp,” Harrington said. “I was up at 4 a.m., on the water in a creek I know has some of these big shrimp. You can catch specks with artificial lures, but for consistently getting bites from big trout, there’s nothing better than big live shrimp.”
October is the best time to fish for specks north of Beaufort, Harrington said, especially in the creeks that get a lot of current flow, “because everything — shrimp, mullet, shad, little panfish — gets flushed down the creek. And that means you’ll have specks following them.”
If you put a bass fisherman on a coastal creek, he’d know exactly where to fish for specks because the habitat above and below the water level is almost identical to a largemouth’s living room.
“When the water’s moving — when the tide’s not slack — that’s the best time to fish,” Harrington said. “It moves baits like shrimp and finger mullet up and down the creeks.”
The secret, just as in bass fishing, isn’t to throw a lure or bait just anywhere, but to find a spot that’s got a current break — a bridge or dock piling, rock, stump, tree lap — anything in the water that offers an ambush spot where trout can rest and not have to expend energy to remain in position. More important, such areas offer good spots to ambush baitfish or shrimp.
“Specks also like to hang out on the edge of the (creek) channels,” Harrington said.
Fishing for specks in creeks is also similar to bass fishing because with the use of a trolling motor and the tide, anglers can glide parallel to the shoreline and cast at targets of opportunity, plus cover a lot of water.
“The baitfish and shrimp get shoved across the edge of those flats into the channel, and the trout line up down there, waiting on them,” Harrington said. “You can start casting your lures or baits from two to 15 feet off the bank; you’ll know it when your rig falls off the channel edge — that’s when you’re most likely to get bit.”
Tackle is what one can expect, although a baitcasting outfit would work as well in the hands of a seasoned angler.
“I like 7-foot medium-action rods with G-Loomis blanks,” said Harrington, whose reels are Saros 300 F Propulsion spinners loaded with 10-pound braid and a 2-foot of 20-pound fluorocarbon.
Because baits or lures need to get to the bottom fairly quickly, he uses 3/8ths- to half-ounce jigheads with his shrimp, depending upon the strength of current flow.
“I like Hank Brown jigs, but you can get Calcutta jigs that are a version of the Hank Browns,” Harrington said. “I like the boxing-glove style heads because they give (the shrimp) a nice steady fall, and they don’t spin in the current. You want a shrimp to appear natural in the water; shrimp don’t spin.”
The jigheads have 2/0 hooks. “It’s a little different than the regular hook size you’d use for specks, but they work for me,” Harrington said.
Shrimp and baitfish begin to move toward the ocean starting in late September, Harrington said, when that first mullet blow occurs.
“(Bait movement) goes on until Christmas,” he said. “By then, most of the specks have gone out into the ocean and (south) down the beach. I’ll fish the creeks until it’s clear the specks are gone. They start to come back in late April and early May.”
When live bait has about disappeared from inshore waters — or for those who don’t want to buy live baits or stick to artificial lures — a pink 4M MirrOlure works well, Harrington said.
“But my favorite lure is a 1½-inch MCHBL MirrOlure with a blue back, chartreuse bottom and red eyes,” Harrington said. “It’s a baby-size (lure), but I used one to catch my biggest speck (a 10-pound, 3-ounce monster on Oct. 29, 2005).
“I don’t know why, but the biggest trout I catch seem to come on small MirrOlures. Everybody else catches big ones with live shrimp.”
There’s no doubt when a speck smacks an artificial lure, but fishing with shrimp is an entirely different matter. It’s said that detecting a flounder bite is tough, but an angler who feels that “tick” on his line only needs to put his reel in free-spool and give a flattie a few seconds to swallow a finger mullet before setting his hook. Trout are not so forgiving.
Speck fishing with live bait, especially jumbo shrimp, is a fast-draw game. As soon as the fisherman feels a bump, he’d better set the hook or he’ll be bringing back a jig cleaned of Mr. Shrimp.
“Sometimes the pinfish are really bad, and you’ll lose a lot of baits to them,” Harrington said. “That’s why you need to have a lot of live shrimp.”
When winter arrives, and specks leave their inshore haunts, Harrington lives close enough to Beaufort Inlet that he can fish the rock jetties from November through January. The jetties are famous for holding massive trout during the colder months.
“There’s no doubt about it,” Harrington said. “Living here is fun year-round, if you like speckled trout; I love it. That’s why I live here.”
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