The speck revival – Swansboro is playing host to a speckled trout revival

Extra protection in 2014 has jump-started great Swansboro speckled trout fishing.

Fred Slann, a guide from New Bern, his friend Chris Walker of Sea Island, N.J., and a visiting writer had one of the most fantastic trout-fishing days ever 10 Octobers ago in the North River east of Beaufort.

Casting soft-plastic shrimp at a sand bar on an incoming tide, they landed 150 to 200 trout — keeping only a few to release in grease — in a span of two hours.

Although this account may sound like a fish tale, it wasn’t; I watched, wrote, photographed and participated. After about 45 minutes of taking notes and photos, I picked up a rod and joined the action. Most of the trout weighed from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds.

I never expected to see a repeat of such a day, but on Oct. 27, 2014, I was proved wrong.

One beautiful, bluebird morning, guide Robbie Hall of Swansboro  pulled his 20-foot center-console away from a dock and, after a winding journey through small creeks and a series of marsh islands, a small boat and busy angler appeared off Hall’s bow, exactly where he was headed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Looks like someone has beaten us.”

As we approached, we saw the angler tussling with a fairly large fish — if the bend in his rod was an indication.

“Nope, that’s my friend, Tommy Jones,” Hall said.

Jones, who’d arrived earlier to find a hot trout hole, grabbed his landing net and leaned over the gunwale and scooped about a 3 ½ -pound trout from the clear water. Jones’s fishing buddy, Admiral, a 1 ½ -year-old German shorthair pointer, was frozen in a perfect point, his nose aimed at his master’s wriggling fish.

Hall went to the other side of a small island that split the current, but before he could drop his trolling motor,  Admiral went on point again as Jones hooked a 3-pound trout, landed it and released it.

And before Hall could get his hands on his spinning tackle, Jones had a third speck on the line.

“You don’t even have to twitch your rod tip,” Jones said. “All you have to do is cast your bait and let it sit in the current.”

“How long have you been here?” Hall asked.

“About 30 minutes,” Jones said.

“How many limits have you caught?” Hall yelled.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe four or five),” said Jones, indicating that he’d caught 16 to 20 specks. “Seems like they’re getting bigger, too.”

After 10 fishless minutes, Hall asked permission from Jones to head in his direction, and Jones gave it quickly.

“I think there are a few more fish left in this hole,” he said.

Set up 40 yards downstream from Jones and Admiral, we cast gray Zoom Flukes toward the island, allowing the current to sweep them along on taut lines. But the first 20 minutes yielded only one 2-pounder, while bigger and bigger specks were whacking Jones’ offerings like hungry relatives at Christmas dinner.

Hall looked at his friend and asked, “What are you throwing?”

“Pink D.O.A.s,” Jones said.

Jones had threaded a 3-inch D.O.A. shrimp onto a long-shanked, 1/8-ounce jighead, heavy enough to allow it to wriggle in the current in the slough, about a foot off the bottom, which was 5 to 7 feet deep.

“I know I’ve got a pink lure on this boat somewhere,” Hall said. However, a search of his tackle boxes proved fruitless.

By then Jones was laughing as he set the hook on another 3 ½ -pounder and skidded it across the surface. A few moments later, Jones was sliding his skiff within range of Hall’s boat and tossing over a few pink shrimp.

“Some days they want one color, and other days they want another,” Hall said. “It’s a pink day.”

Hall, who also works at The Reel Outdoors Shop in Emerald Isle, tied on a couple of the shrimp with a loop knot to 2 feet of fluorocarbon leader tied to 15-pound braided running line on Quantum Smoke PTsA reels mated with 7-foot Fenwick Eagle GT 7-foot-long rods.

The only problem, he said, in using light tackle for specks is the possibility of hooking a 25- to 30-inch red drum.

“If you hook up a redfish that size in this current, he’ll just go,” Hall said. “You’ve got to follow and play him. It’s a good thing redfish are strong, because it could really hurt some species to fight ’em a long time.”

During the next hour until the tide hit low, we hooked and landed 30 to 40 trout between 2 ½ and 5 pounds. When the current stopped, the bite disappeared.

“You don’t need a strong incoming or outgoing tide, but when it goes slack, the bite stops,” Hall said. “But as long as you have a little current, you can catch fish, even if that means changing spots to find some moving water.”

Hall usually likes to time his fishing to match the first two hours of the rising tide, but trout also bite the last two hours of a falling tide — which I’d experienced 10 years earlier.

“The trout fishing’s like this nearly every day during October, except after a hard winter freeze that kills a lot of trout,” Hall said. “But sometimes that has a good effect.”

Early in February 2014, extremely cold weather stunned and killed thousands of trout in the creeks off the Neuse, Pamlico and Pungo rivers. The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, finding evidence of trout kills from Wilmington to Albemarle Sound, closed commercial and recreational fishing for trout until June 15, 2014.

The cold effects weren’t felt too much around Swansboro, and the shutdown of the fishery had some positive effects.

“I think the lack of fishing pressure saved big numbers of trout and larger fish for our area because netters couldn’t take fish for almost six months,” Hall said. “I caught my biggest trout, an 8-pounder, in October.”

Before North Carolina began experiencing severe winters, he said November was the best time to catch good numbers and more “gator” specks.

“Now October seems to be the best month,” he said.

During October, trout “stage” near the mouths of inlets, particularly in the marshes south of Swansboro.

“Browns and Bear inlets are good places to go later in the month and in early November because baitfish start to move out toward the ocean,” Hall said. “As early winter gets here and the weather really cools down, you can find trout at the marshes and creeks behind those islands.”

When much colder weather arrives during November and December, specks reverse course and head up the White Oak and New rivers to winter at the backs of feeder creeks.

“There’s one creek I go from November through March and catch 5- and 7-pound trout,” said Hall, 34, who prays that no large cold-stun events occur for a while to halt recreational fishing. However, even if freezes come, a beneficial by-product may be bigger trout.

DESTINATION INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE — Swansboro is south of Morehead City/Atlantic Beach and north of Wilmington. From points west, take I-40 out of Raleigh, then east at NC 24 to Jacksonville and Swansboro. From Wilmington, take US 17 north to Jacksonville, then NC 24 to Swansboro. From points north, take US 17 to Maysville, then NC 58 south to Cape Carteret and southwest on NC 24 across the White Oak River to Swansboro.

WHEN TO GO — The best fishing for spotted seatrout is from September through mid-November.

BEST TECHNIQUES — A good combo for speckled trout is a 7-foot, medium-action spinning outfit spooled with 20-pound Power Braid and a 2 ½-foot leader of 20-pound fluorocarbon. Top lures include 2 3/4- to 3-inch D.O.A shrimp in pink; 3 1/2- to 4-inch Zoom Super Fluke, plus soft-plastic paddletails, curlytails and jerkbaits.

FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Robbie Hall, Hall ‘Em In Charters, 910-330-6999, www.hallemincharters.com; Rick Patterson, Cape Crusader Charters, 252-342-1513, www.capecrusadercharters.com; Ricky Kellum, The Speckled Specialist, www.speckledspecialist.com, 910-330-2745; Jot Owens, Jot It Down Fishing Charters, 910-233-4139. www.captainjot.com; Reel Outdoors Tackle Shop, Emerald Isle, 252-354-6692; Dudley’s Marina, Swansboro, 252-393-2204. See also Guides & Charters in Classifieds.

ACCOMMODATIONS — Waterway Inn, Swansboro, 252-393-8027 or 877-216-4206; Swansboro Chamber of Commerce, 910-326-1174, www.swansborochamber.org.

MAPS — Capt. Segull’s Nautical Charts, 888-473-4855, www.captainsegullcharts.com; Sealake Fishing Guides, 800-411-0185, www.thegoodspots.com; Grease Chart, 800-326-3567, www.greasechart.com; GMCO’s Chartbook of North Carolina, www.gmcomaps.com.