Alex Smith cast a Heddon Super Spook Jr. over a submerged grass bed near Cat Island and began his retrieve by twitching the lure back and forth but he didn’t get too far.
“Wham!” A huge speckled trout erupted from the grass bed and exploded onto the lure as Smith reared back and drove the hooks deep into the trout’s jaws. The resultant battle was exciting, but Smith wore the trout down and landed him. That speck was 27 ½ inches long!
“I work at Dupont Chemical in Gulfport, and I like to fish late afternoon during July,” Smith said. “I’ll leave the dock between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. and head out towards Cat Island and fish until dark. We’ve been catching them on the north side of Cat Island but that’s slowed down recently.
“Prime time for me is the last hour before dark during July. We used to start deep and work shallow but this year we’ve been catching them super shallow, so we are starting shallow first and for some reason the big trout are burying up in the grass about a foot and a half deep.”
Smith also likes to fish the west side of Cat Island where there are a couple of shelves that go from 7-feet deep to 4-feet deep and then down to a foot or so.
“A lot of people like to use croakers, but this year we haven’t caught any big fish on them,” Smith said. “This year we’ve been using a ¼-ounce jig head with a Matrix Shad and burning it through the grass and we are catching a lot of them, plenty of small ones too. Catching trophy trout is my thing and I’d rather catch one big one on topwater than a bunch of small ones any day.”
Topwater lure modification
Smith said the big trout have been buried up deep in the thick grass, which comes up within inches of the water’s surface in places.
“We are catching some big ones on topwater, but I am modifying some of my lures,” he said. “Usually the treble hooks will catch a lot of grass and that makes working them difficult, so I’ve been changing the trebles over to a single hook and facing them backwards to keep the grass off of the hooks. I’ll match the hook size to the size of the original hooks so that the lure action will still be the same.”
“Usually the presence of baitfish and cooler water temperatures are keys to catching big trout, but this July the water surface temperature is in the low 90s and the trout are still in the super shallow water. I don’t know if the grass is keeping that water cooler or the trout are staying in there to keep away from the sharks, but they are there.”
Areas of grass that have pogies and ballyhoo are usually good indicators that trout are there. Smith usually looks for ballyhoo and if he finds them in an area, he usually catches trout there. If you are searching for trout off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, then you should be able to find them in thick grass around the islands and similar shallow water places. Find the grass and baitfish and you should be in business!
Other fishing options
While Smith has put in a lot of time learning Cat Island, he’s also caught a lot of big fish around Gulfport Harbor, but they have been inconsistent there this year. He also thinks you could duplicate what he’s doing around Cat Island and at some of the other islands like Ship Island and Horn Island if you can locate patches of grass beds that hold baitfish too. The Chandeleur Islands would probably be a good place to try as well.
Preferred tackle: Smith prefers fishing with a St. Croix Legend 7-foot rod with medium light action and fast tip paired with a Shimano Bantom reel with 20-pound Power-Pro blue braid line with 3-foot of fluorocarbon Seagar line tied to the braid with an Alberto Knot.
Topwater lures: Smith’s favorite topwater lure is a Heddon Spook Jr. with a black head and chrome body.
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