The audacity of man to believe he can create a fishing bait better then God’s own hands never ceases to amaze die-hard, live-bait anglers, especially when speckled trout are concerned. With bait moving back into the estuaries, here’s your pick of the best live baits for big specks.
Few organisms in the ocean can match the fast life cycle of the dolphin fish, coryphaena hippurus. Dolphin reach sexual maturity at four to five months, where it takes a king mackerel three years to spawn. The world-record dolphin, 87 pounds was believed to be slightly less than five years old. By comparison, the world-record king mackerel, a 93-pound fish, was thought to be closer to 25 years old.
Skeet Thomas has developed a routine for hunting toward the very end of the season that typically provides a lot of gobbling and gobbler activity. […]
While most of you are humming that song from “The Lion King”, the circle of life for speckled trout begins in South Carolina marshes when two environmental factors signal mature trout that it’s time to get busy.
1) Using a thawed, small/medium, high-quality ballyhoo, remove the bait’s eyes with an arrow shaft.
2) Use cutting pliers to remove the bait’s pectoral fins.
When you find a group of bream beds, the fishing can be fast. If you’re catching a mixture of small and big fish, angler Josh Devlin has a tip for targeting bigger ones.
May and June offer great opportunities for fishermen who dream of hooking up with a powerhouse, 50-pound cobia just off the beach. But anglers must act fast if they want to get a hookup, because no matter how lazy these fish appear when cruising along the surface, they become less and less catchable every minute a boat is on the scene.
Veteran angler Josh Devlin of Florence said bream beds are easy to find on the Little Pee Dee River, and while he enjoys pulling out one bream after the other, he also makes sure not to fish them too hard.
Guide Karl Helmkamp said many hunters who don’t have access to private lands will give up on game lands after the first couple of weeks of turkey season, and that is a mistake. […]
Guide Jot Owens begins seeing cobia off Wrightsville Beach in May, and on a typical day, he will head to the Masonboro Inlet jetties first thing early in the morning and then start running the beach looking for pods of bait and free-swimming cobia. But he can never count on them being in the same place day after day.
Copyright 1999 - 2024 Carolina Sportsman, Inc. All rights reserved.