Monster speckled trout are still on the oyster reefs near the barrier islands. Today I want to talk about how important it is to monitor the salinity of the water and what to look for regarding the speckled trout bite. Sometime around the fourth of July the salinity level dropped under a five on my seawater refractometer. I noticed the bite dropped off along with the salinity level. The current must have been just right to steer the river water right along the Louisiana coast and that cause the salinity level to drop. I have been catching limits of nice speckled trout up to the fourth of July and then suddenly, the bite dropped off. The next trip out to the beach I took my seawater refractometer and sure enough the salt level dropped off under the mark of five. For the next three weeks in the month of July we didn’t catch anything to write home about. I paid very close attention to other guides and recreational folks as well and nobody was catching much of anything during this time frame. I kept checking the salinity levels each time I would go out and the salt content stayed low the rest of the month of July. Then suddenly around the end of the first week in August the salinity level jumped up above fifteen and guess what, we started catching some nice speckled trout again. For a long time, I always heard that when the water temperature gets up around ninety degrees’ the trout will move out to deeper water where it is cooler and will stay out there until sometime in September when we start getting some cool fronts. That will drop the water temperature a few degrees’ and the trout will start working their way back in towards the beach. Well I am not here to dispute that concept however I do believe the salt content has a lot to do with the movement of the trout as well. Mother nature can be very hard to figure out sometimes and most of the time she has more than one reason why something happens at a certain time. One thing I know for sure is that the wild life knows more than we do and it is up to us to try and figure out the hidden secrets of the wild. To better understand some of the reasons why marine life behaves certain ways and various times of the year we must pay attention to the details when we are on the water fishing. What I mean by that is we should always pay attention to first what time of the year it is, where we are trying to fish, what the wind direction and speed is on that day, if there is either a high pressure or low pressure over you on that day, what time of the day you are fishing, the tide direction, the tide range and most of all what is the salinity level on that day. I started keeping a log of all this information on my trips and it gives me something to go back on to look what happen last year on any giving day. Now let me be clear on this, sometimes you will want to throw away the note book you are keeping because you will not have it all figured out after the second or third year you practice this task. Sometimes my data has me scratching my head in total confusion because nothing seems to make sense. But there is a lot of times I can connect all the dots and my past data makes perfect sense as to why I am catching or not catching fish. If you simply enjoy fishing and you just go when you get a day off work, then all this data keeping may not be for you, but if you are serious about understanding why you catch or don’t catch you might want to give this exercise a try. Becoming a better angler is what I try to become ever year that passes buy because a lot of people depend on me to put them on speckled trout when they book a fishing trip with me. I also understand that some things are made not to understand and we are to have fun weather we catch fish or not. I get that and I practice that mind set all the time by telling my customers I never know if we are going to catch or not. Sometimes I think, because of the data I have, that we are going to slam the speckled tout and go out and not do good at all, on the other hand I accept trips sometimes thinking we are going to strike out and end up slamming the trout. I always say it is a blessing to be able to leave the camp in the morning thinking you are going to have an enjoyable time
weather you catch fish or not. If you can do that, I promise you will start to enjoy your fishing trips more than ever before. Remember what I talk about on most of my blog’s, building memories on a fishing trip is not always because you caught a limit of speckled trout and red fish. It is mainly because you were spending time with friends and family laughing and cutting up while on the water fishing. At the end of the day you will remember the valuable time you had fishing with your friends and family more than pulling fish over the side of the boat. It is the unimportant things you will remember like showing a kid how to take a cat fish off their hook without getting stuck. The ride out in the morning watching the bayou come alive with all the wildlife. Simply watching the sun come up out of the marsh is one of the most beautiful things you will ever see on the way to your fishing spot. 
