Speck-ulation Jubilation

If North Carolina is lucky enough in 2007 to avoid another big chill, specks will offer anglers even more thrills.

Veteran fishermen knew early in the summer that 2006 was going to be a special year.There were a lot of speckled trout in North Carolina waters, the most in several years, and as the summer and fall progressed, they got bigger and bigger and bigger — in part because of a bumper crop of shrimp.

Before it was over, 2006 was considered a banner year for specks. With a little help from the weather this winter, 2007 could be just as good or better.

“It was the best year I’ve seen since 1985,” said biologist Beth Burns of Manteo, who oversees speckled trout for the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries. “Really, I’ve never had the greatest handle on the southern part of the coast, but this appears to have been a great year, statewide, with even better catches from Morehead (City) south. It was just phenomenal. People who’ve never caught speckled trout before caught speckled trout.

“But you always worry about the weather.”

Ah, yes, the weather. What Mother Nature giveth, she taketh away. But Burns and a lot of fishermen who understand the ups and downs of the spotted sea trout, what happens from here until springtime will go a long way toward determining whether 2007 is as good as or even exceeds 2006.

The key to the success in 2006 was mild winter weather — and that’s a key ingredient in the 2007 season. Speckled trout are one of the coastal species most affected by cold weather. They simply don’t like it, and if they get the wrong kind of cold weather, they tend to roll up to the surface and die.

“We always worry about cold weather,” Burns said. “What’s better for speckled trout is if we get our cold weather gradually — a normal winter. Then, they can get out of the creeks and get into deeper water where it’s a little warmer, and they can survive.

“When we have had (a kill), what has happened is that we’ve had a real hard freeze, all of the sudden, and the trout have gotten trapped in some of those shallow creeks. If they can get to deep water, they can get acclimated and survive.”

The last big winter kill was in January 2003; that set the speckled trout population back, and it took three years to recover. Another killing freeze occurred during 2001. Some fish got through each freeze, but the population took a big step backwards.

“We saw five year-classes: 0 through 4 years old,” Burns said. “The amazing thing about speckled trout is that no matter how big a fish is, how big the fish are that people bring me to look at, most of the big citation fish we see are age 4. Most of the fish caught are 1 through 4.

“Small (young) trout showed up everywhere last year,” she said. “I really don’t know how many there were, but we’ve seen all sizes of fish over the past year. Most of the fish I usually sample are 1 or 2 years old. This year, there were a lot of 4- and 5-year-old fish. If we make it through the winter without a big freeze, we should see more classes of those citation fish (4 pounds and more).”

Burns said specks start to be affected when the water temperature drops into the upper 40s; they get lethargic at first. When the mercury drops to 45 degrees or below, that’s when trout are in danger or being killed.

“Historically, that’s happened in January and February,” she said. “Brian Horsley (a guide from the Manteo area) says this is our El Nino year, that the winter will be wet but mild. If he’s right, I think the spring (of 2007) will be wonderful.”

Burns said the age structure of the speckled trout population should increase if there is no winter kill, even though mortality tends to increase as fish age. She also said the DMF is planning to do a complete stock assessment of specks this year, which should give biologists a better idea what the age structure looks like across the state.

Fish from Virginia even showed up in North Carolina waters last fall and early winter. Burns said Virginia biologists were doing a tagging study, and fish that were tagged in the Chesapeake Bay showed up not only along the northern portion of the Outer Banks, but all the way across the Pamlico Sound to Rose Bay.

“Speckled trout are the lowest-reported of all species when it comes to tagging,” she said. “If any fishermen catch tagged fish, they need to send the tags back to Virginia.”

It was no surprise to a lot of North Carolina fishermen that 2006 was a banner year for specks.

Frank Folb, who owns Frank & Fran’s tackle shop in Avon, said fishermen started picking up specks in the Pamlico Sound behind Hatteras and Ocracoke islands in early June, and the fishing only got better.

“It was a very good year; we got used to seeing ’em over 4 pounds,” said Folb. “They’ve been caught from Kitty Hawk all the way to Ocracoke. And early in the year, before we really started to see ’em, they had a lot of them in the New Bern area and down that way.”

Folb said that the majority of fall specks caught along the Outer Banks, especially in the surf, were 2-1/2- and 3-pound fish. “There were quite a few 4s, so it was a very good year,” he said. “But we know why — we haven’t had a hard freeze in the last couple of years.”

On the opposite end of the coast, Hunter McCray at The Rod & Reel Shop in Supply said that it was a fantastic season for specks.

“We killed ’em,” McCray said. “We had a great year on trout — a fantastic year. We knew we had a mild winter last year, and if we can just make it through (February), we should have another great year.”

McCray said that 2006 not only brought better overall numbers of fish, it brought a better class of specks.

“The trout were running consistently bigger than in years past,” he said. “We had a great year — a mild winter, and a big crop of shrimp for them to eat. I think the shrimp was definitely a contributing factor to the kind of fish we were catching; after all, that’s their favorite food.”

McCray said trout at the Brunswick County beaches showed up in the surf early in the summer, but the fishing really got cranked up once the water started to cool off early in the fall and more fish moved into the ICW and into the backwater creeks and coastal rivers.

Guide Rick Bennett of Rodman Charters said fishing for specks in the Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach areas was outstanding.

“It was a great year, no question about it. It was that good,” he said. “In all the trips I had for specks, we probably only caught two or three undersized fish (less than 12 inches). And we had many more citation fish.

“I caught a 7-pound fish in the surf on a MirrOLure, and as I was backing up the beach, everybody crowded around to watch, and it seemed like that fish just kept coming out of the water — he was so long.

“We caught all sizes, up to 7 or 8 pounds. We didn’t have many of them, but we had some. And we had several 40-fish days.”

Perhaps the best fishing of all was in the Cape Lookout area, where specks showed up early in the summer in the Newport marshes — the “Haystacks” — and kept showing up and getting bigger and bigger as the summer and fall progressed.

Capt. Joe Shute, an inshore guide who owns Capt. Joe’s Bait & Tackle in Atlantic Beach, said a bumper crop of shrimp in coastal waters contributed mightily to the trout fishing.

“It was good — the best season we had in four or five years,” said Shute. “We had no (winter) freeze, and we had a great shrimp crop.

“On average, most of the fish we caught were between a pound-and-a-half and 3 1/2 pounds. We had a lot of 3- to 6-pound trout — a bunch of ’em. We were catching ’em good all summer, and when you do that, they’ll be good in the fall. They got bigger and bigger and in more quantity.”

Shute said a ton of big specks showed up in the fall, with plenty of citation fish weighed at his store.

“We saw an awful lot of 4-, 5- and 5 1/2-pound fish. We saw some 7s and 8s, but mostly there were 4- to 5 1/2-pound fish,” he said.

“They came from everywhere — from the surf, the Haystacks, Core Creek and the (Fort Macon and Cape Lookout) rock jetties. They were spread out everywhere.

“One big thing was the good shrimp crop we had; that had a lot to do with it.

“We had the shrimp for the specks to eat. They had plenty of food, so we got a lot of big fish.”