Speckled Trout
Cynoscion nebulosus
Spotted seatrout, speckled trout, specks — a gorgeous fish, silver-purple with scattered black spots and two prominent canine teeth that will part a light leader if you let them.
They are grass-bed fish. Where submerged aquatic vegetation is healthy in the lower Bay and the seaside bays, specks follow the shrimp and small baitfish that live there, feeding hardest on moving water at the edges of the grass. Soft plastics on light jigheads, suspending twitchbaits, and topwater at dawn all work; the common thread is a presentation that stays in the strike zone just above the grass.
Specks are sensitive to cold. A hard winter freeze in the shallow coastal bays can cause a fish kill that dents the population for several seasons, which is why the fishery ebbs and flows year to year in a way the more robust species do not.
Gear for this fish