Bordertown specks

Speckled trout are frisky at NC/SC state line

Between Calabash, NC and Little River, SC, the Calabash River meets the Intracoastal Waterway. These are fertile grounds for some of the hottest speckled trout fishing on the Carolina coastlines.

And the specks don’t disappoint during the winter months. They’re hungry and feeding, and they’ll bite a wide variety of lures throughout the day.

You can’t go wrong starting the morning off with some sort of topwater lure like a Zara Spook, a Sammy, or a surface-running MirrOlure.

Working any of those lures over the top of submerged oyster beds is always a good idea.The majority of these bites will come in fairly shallow water, but that isn’t always the case by any measure.

“Most anglers simply fish these lures in that manner more often than any other,” said Bill Dyess, who frequents these waters all winter when he’s snowbirding from Maine.

“But I’ve caught specked trout on surface lures far from the banks, in water as deep as 20 feet,” he said.

Dyess said that’s one reason anglers working a walk-the-dog type lure should walk it all the way back to the boat.

“Sometimes these fish are roaming around a good bit. A lot of anglers will work the lure properly until it’s 30 feet from the boat, then they’ll just reel in from there as quickly as possible,” he said.

It’s a lesson Dyess learned through his own experiences.

“I was just reeling one quickly in, and I got hit hard by a speckled trout. I could see the fish break the surface. It swiped at the lure and missed. I thought it was just a weird coincidence, but it happened to me several other times after that. So I finally realized I needed to work it properly all the way back,” he said.

And since then, he said he’s caught numerous fish much closer to the boat than he’d ever thought possible before.

Soft plastics

Soft plastic lures like D.O.A shrimp and shad tail swimbaits are other good choices. Dyess prefers the shrimp, but said some days the swimbaits work better.

“I like to work the shrimp a lot slower than the swimbaits. And sometimes, that just doesn’t get bites. Or, if I’m in areas with lots of oyster shells, I get hung up too much to fish that way. So then I switch over to a swimbait,” he said.

He fishes these slightly faster, but said he still likes to have some contact with the bottom.

“I like to feel it grazing the bottom, but I never let it sit on the bottom,” he said.

He fishes these on jigheads anywhere from 1/8-ounce to 1/4-ounce. When using shrimp, he prefers the moss green/pearl color. For swimbaits, he likes rootbeer with a chartreuse tail.

“I don’t think the color matters all that much on most days. I have my favorites, but I catch them on about any color when I’m running low on those,” he said.

Dyess said anglers shouldn’t be discouraged by cold weather.

“Bundle up and get out there. I’ve had some of the best fishing days of my life here when it’s been brutally cold,” he said.