A special time with plenty of fish spending lots of time in the shallows feeding aggressively.

Story and photography by Danno Wise

For many Texas coastal anglers, nothing beats early summer speckled trout fishing and that is what they have to look forward to over the next couple months. How you may ask given the fact of it isn’t quite summer. In fact, summer doesn’t officially begin until the third week of June, meaning there is still officially nearly two months of the spring season remaining.

However, warm temperatures set in unusually early this year and have served to change fishing patterns – pushing everything to run a bit ahead. Hence, the early summer pattern during late spring. So, anglers should expect May to fish like June this year.

That brings up the next question – what does early summer pattern mean? Simply put, when speckled trout are in an early summer pattern, there will be plenty of fish spending plenty of time in the shallows feeding plenty aggressively.

In even more simple terms, fishing is typically relatively easy when specks are in an early summer pattern. Given the weather conditions, which have made for ideal conditions for shrimp and baitfish hatches as well as speckled trout spawning, this year there should be even more days offering prime angling opportunities than usual.

With that in mind, anglers most certainly could and probably will encounter spawning trout throughout May and June this year. Most anglers think of spring and fall as the two times speckled trout spawn. While that is true, it is also correct that speckled trout can and will spawn throughout the spring, summer and fall multiple times as long as conditions are conducive to spawning activity.

In fact, most trout spawn multiple times per year once they reach sexual maturity (one to two years of age). Given the right conditions, speckled trout are capable of spawning every few weeks. While that may be excessive, the early warm weather caused an early initial spawn this year, so a good many speckled trout will either still be finishing up from their primary spring spawn or beginning with a secondary spawn getting underway.

************************************************************************
To read more, click here to SUBSCRIBE