Don’t miss fishing around Mississippi Sound’s barrier islands this spring.
Tommy Sutton turned off the big motor on his 24-foot Blue Wave, which started drifting through the shallows south of Cat Island on the western edge of the Mississippi Sound. He pointed to his electronics and smiled.
“Look, 79-degree water, and at sunrise,” said Sutton, a veteran angler originally from Columbia but now living in Slidell, La. “Pretty good for mid-April, and you know it will top 80 degrees when the sun’s been on it. Last night was the full moon, so the specks should be spawning — or at least getting ready to.”
Quickly, Sutton had a rod in his hand and the trolling motor in the water. He gauged the wind direction and turned the boat to set up a drift line parallel to the island.
“Grass mats are all over in here; we just have to drift until we find one holding trout,” Sutton said. “We’ll work that patch of grass and keep doing the same pattern all day, and I bet we find ’em stacked on a couple of mats.”
The first mat provided our first two bites, but the trout were undersized, so we kept drifting.
“The next one up here about 100 yards is the one we killed them on last year in early May, big fat sows,” he said. “Remember that day? Between here and Flat-bottom Key we limited out in a couple of hours.”
Bam!
“Tom, I got one,” I hollered. “Look at my line and throw it past there; I haven’t moved it 10 feet. Throw right behind where it meets the water.”
His grub landed just feet from where mine had been eaten.
Bam!
“I’m poling down, ’cause we got a double,” Sutton said, holding his rod high with one hand and fumbling with the Power Pole fob around his neck. We quickly boated the first two keepers of what would become a fine box of trout.
For two hours, we drifted from grass mat to grass mat and slick to slick, and we hooked up on a lot of good trout. We would put the anchor poles down and work each mat or slick until we were satisfied, then move on.
We kept mostly male trout, which were drumming in our hands, and a few of the smaller but legal females up to 2 or 3 pounds. The big, fat females, anything over 3 pounds, we turned loose.
For us, it’s a matter of taste and biology. The smaller fish taste better to us, and the bigger fish are the backbone of the fishery. Older sows, 20 inches and up, are the most prolific spawners, and biologists urge their release.
Biology: About the spawn
Speckled trout begin spawning in mid-April when surface temperatures get to 78 degrees or higher and stay there. The spawn peaks in May and June and ends in mid-September, according to the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Lab in Ocean Springs. Specks will spawn as often as every four days in the best habitat, which includes a salinity level of about 25 parts per thousand (ppt). They’ll spawn at least once every 14 days in less-than-prime habitat.
Big females produce as many as 10 to 15 times more eggs per spawning event than do smaller ones, according to the GCRL. A female 10 to 11 inches long has reached spawning maturity.
There is evidence that trout 20 inches and up can produce more than a million eggs per spawning event and up to 15 million in a year in both Louisiana and Texas, but those numbers are lower in Mississippi. GCRL statistics for Mississippi show an average of 153,000 eggs per event for an 18- to 20-inch fish that’s 4 years old and 350,000 per event for a fish longer than 20 inches that’s 5 years old, with an average of about 5 million per year.
Those statistics make it clear that the catch-and-release of big, female speckled trout is a good idea for the sake of the fishery.
Trout eggs are miniscule, the size of a grain of sand, and each has a high oil content that gives it buoyancy, allowing it to float in saltwater. That is why a moderately high salinity level — 25 ppt is ideal— is required for a spawn, and why most spawning occurs outside of bays along barrier islands or natural shorelines. In bays, what spawning does take place is extremely close to the mouth of the bay closest to open water where salinity levels far exceed the levels further up into bays.
Specks are broadcast spawners; they don’t build nests, and neither sex hangs around after the eggs and milt (male sperm) are expressed and mixed as they float below the surface. Eggs hatch within 18 to 24 hours, and the miniscule fry immediately seek cover like grass or shell bottoms. They grow fast, up to 2 inches in 6 to 8 weeks and to 10 inches in a year.
Specks spawn in schools. Males make a thumping noise — drumming — to attract females and encourage them to drop eggs. The thumping can often be heard by fishermen, especially those in an aluminum boat. The mass spawning puts more milt and eggs in the water, yielding a higher level of fertilization success.
Buoyancy is important so the milt can completely surround each egg and is a reason why specks target forage fish with a high oil content like mullet and menhaden during the prespawn and spawn. Fishermen love to see an oil slick pop up on the surface in a spawning area and will immediately move to fish that area.
Trout mostly spawn at night, from sunset to about midnight, and since spawning is a high-energy task, they feed heavily the next morning, which is why a peak time to fish is sunrise to about 9 a.m. during the full and new moon periods.
April action: ‘It’s crazy’
Guide Sonny Schindler has fond memories of April trout action. Those memories are important, because in recent years, the influx of freshwater from the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway to alleviate high water in the Mississippi River west of New Orleans has hurt early season trout fishing in his primary area on the west end of the Mississippi Sound.
“Two straight years and a few others in the last decade, I’ve had to rely on redfish due to the low salinity in April,” said Schindler, who operates the multi-boat fleet that is Shore Thing Charters in Bay St. Louis. “But I can clearly remember the many great days in April that we enjoyed with specks.
“When everything is right, it’s crazy.”
Everything being “right” begins with salinity levels, continues with warm weather and bait-filled waters and closed gates at Bonnet Carre.
Full or new moons are the final key.
“April starts in the prespawn period, when it’s kind of like the fish realize, ‘Hey, guys, we got to get busy eating because we’re fixing to have a lot of work to do,’” Schindler said. “I’m looking for clean, salty water with some grass or shell bottoms, and in Mississippi, that means the barrier islands. We’re very fortunate to have that habitat.
“We concentrate more on Cat Island, but the other islands like Ship, Petit Bois and Horn are just as good. But why would we run over productive water to get to others? Both the north and south sides of the barrier islands have spawning potential.”
Once at his destination, Schindler looks for surface activity.
“I look for bait flicking or gamefish hitting on the surface and slicks, boy, I love to fish the slicks,” he said. “There’s only one reason for a slick to appear. Something is feeding on something nearby. I depend on them all year, but particularly in the spring. If you’re around grass or an oyster bed and a slick pops up, man, you are in the money.
“Your better bites are almost always on the full and new moon cycles, one or two days on either side. A calm day on a full moon in April — it just doesn’t get any better. It’s crazy.”
On those days, the bait or lure really doesn’t matter.
“They’ll hit anything,” Schindler said. “Normally, I’m an ‘Elephant-will-eat-a-peanut’ sort of guy, meaning I like to throw small baits. Look, I cut fish open nearly every day and see what they eat, and I’m telling you, it’s rare that you see big prey in trout. The exception is April or any spawn or prespawn feeding frenzy. A 12-inch trout will try to eat a Zara Spook. It’s crazy.
“My No. 1 choice as a charter captain during the spawn is a healthy croaker under a Boat Monkey float with a split-shot to keep it down. Around grass, you have to have the float. The split-shot just irritates and aggravates the croaker and makes him cut up and croak more often, and that improves your chances of getting bit.
“My No. 2 choice is healthy, live shrimp, then I go to the soft plastics. I have no problem with a guy who wants to throw a topwater or a suspending jerkbait, and I know they’ll work, but as a charter captain, I’m not always working with clients who have the expertise to work those baits.”
Bobby Chouest of Bon Chance Charters in Grand Isle, La., was the first guide to introduce me to croakers and spawning trout, pulling up in front of Elmer’s Island.
“You want big trout, you’ve got to have croakers,” Chouest said. “You can catch a lot of trout on a lot of baits but if you want a big trout, a gator trout, you can’t beat a croaker.”
Chouest then proceeded to prove it by helping his four clients put 100 trout, all bigger than 18 inches, in his huge fish box. Every one was caught on a croaker in the surf, over a shell bottom in a rocky area, on a Carolina rig with a weight about a foot above the hook. Two 7-pounders were released.
“He was right when he told you that,” Schindler said. “Big trout like big croakers. There’s no doubt about it. You can probably catch more fish on shrimp, but when targeting big fish, you want croakers. Live bait, whether it’s croakers or shrimp, stacks the deck in your favor.”
Schindler, who ran charters out of Venice, La., before returning to his native Mississippi, often fishes the Biloxi Marsh across the border in Louisiana at the far west end of the Mississippi Sound.
“The last two years have been tough in the marsh, again because of the freshwater influx from Bonnet Carre through lakes Ponchartrain and Borgne,” he said. “But some of my most memorable April trips have been in the (Biloxi Marsh). It can be crazy.
“I remember this one morning, on a full moon.…”
Memories of such days fill the minds of all coastal fishermen. To make one of your own this April take note: The full moon is scheduled for April 27.
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