Drop Shotting for Winter Speckled Trout
Keith Lusher 01.08.24
Drop shotting is a popular method used by lots of anglers who target bass, but in the saltwater world, it isn’t as popular. For most speckled trout anglers a weighted jig head on some sort of plastic minnow serves as their go-to method of catching fish – I know it’s certainly my preferred way to fish. On my latest fishing trip, however, I was introduced to a rig that I’ve never used while fishing for speckled trout – The drop shot rig!
My trip began early as I met Danny Hunter of New Orleans Best Charters at the boat launch. It was 5:00 a.m. and very cold. As Hunter gunned the engine we both put our hoods on and tied the strings. (55 mph + 30 degrees isn’t a good combination) The sun was barely peaking over the horizon as we pulled up to our first spot. It was a community fish hole in Eastern New Orleans known as the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). This spot is known for its great production of speckled trout during the cold winter months because of its depth. The canal depth is attributed to dredging which makes it ideal for large ships and barges to pass through. The ship channel contains depths of 40 feet in some places.
I started throwing my standard plastic shad on a 3/8 oz. jighead and Hunter was using an in-line drop shot hook with a 1-oz. bank sinker. He was using a small 3-inch Zoom Tiny Fluke in the Smokin Shad color. “With the water so clear out here, all you really need is a naturally colored lure to get the fish to bite,” Hunter said. After his fourth cast of the morning, Hunter set the hook on a 14-inch speckled trout and tossed it into the ice box.
After he made a few more casts, Captain Hunter had our second fish of the day. I then decided to watch how he was working the drop-shot rig so that I could replicate his results. He was casting his line out and letting the weight sink all the way to the bottom. Then he barely dragged the weight on the bottom lifting his rod with every four or five revolutions of the reel. I did exactly what he was doing but came up empty. After watching Hunter put the third fish into the boat I decided to switch over to the drop shot rig. Immediately I saw results as I was able to feel the bite and set the hook on a 13-inch speck. “The drop shot rig presents the lure more naturally. With a jighead, you have an up and down motion, but with the drop shot rig, that lure stays horizontal and remains in the strike zone for suspended fish,” he said.
We fished that same deep hole in the ship channel for about three hours and were able to catch about 30 speckled trout using the drop shot rig. I will say that the throw-back-to-keeper ratio was 5-1 with most of our fish being 12 inches. The new speckled trout regulations that went into effect in December for Louisiana played a big part in how many specks we threw back. Hunter said it should remain this way until the new regulations start resulting in 13-inch keepers. “It’s going to be a grind for a while with lots of throwback trout but all-in-all I think we’ll get used to it and it’s going to result in more quality trout, he said. In the end, we managed a 2-man limit of trout but more importantly, I learned a new technique that I previously only used while bass fishing. Drop-shotting specks will definitely be a method that I incorporate in the future when looking for stubborn trout during the mid-winter months!
