Rick Percy’s surefire way of boating September speckled trout is by fishing oyster beds on an incoming tide, but he said a lot of other anglers approach these flats the wrong way. While many will pull within casting distance, anchor down, then cast toward them, he has a different approach that works well.
Percy looks for shell beds that run perpendicular to a shoreline or sandbars, and especially those that are completely out of the water at low tide but become submerged at high tide. When he finds such a spot, he anchors so close to the shore that he is casting behind his boat toward those a spot where the incoming tide on one side of the shell bank collides with the current on the opposite side of the shell bank as the water covers it. This current break, he said, is where baitfish gets pushed and swirled around by the opposing currents.
“Trout know this, and they will move into these spots as soon as the tide starts pushing in. They wait for those baitfish to get washed right to them,” he said.
This is where popping corks are very effective; Percy said anglers should cast live bait or plastic shrimp under the cork into the current. He stresses that it doesn’t have to be all that close to the current break, because the tide will push it there.
“The tide pushes the bait right to that break, and you can estimate within just a few feet where that bait will get bit,” he said.
Be the first to comment