Finding the Ghost Trout of Alabama’s Mobile
Bay
Follow the Bait to Find the Trout
Editor’s
Note: Most visitors to Alabama’s Gulf Coast fill
their ice chests with speckled trout, redfish and flounder
during the spring, summer and fall. Five and 6-pound
trout come frequently from the artificial reefs, numerous
oyster reefs and oil rigs in Mobile Bay. But when Jack
Frost comes calling, he seems to cause the trout in
the bay to vanish like ghosts. Only the locals and some
veteran fishermen know the secrets, which they pass
down from generation to generation, to finding these
trout that take a northern wintertime vacation to warmer
waters and more-abundant food. What we’ve learned
from these ghost-like trout in Mobile Bay may help you
find where cold-weather trout stay in secluded hot spots
all along the Upper Gulf Coast.
Today, I’m the third generation of trout fishermen
in my family on Alabama’s Gulf Coast.
My father learned the secrets of the ghost trout from
his father, and my grandfather had the secret passed
down to him from his longtime fishing friends, the Collins’
family, who had lived on the Magnolia River, one of
Mobile Bay’s estuaries, since the early Spanish
explorers traveled that way. Although life, land and
the activity on the waterways may change, the ghost
trout of Alabama’s Gulf Coast have remained as
dependable in the wintertime as Canada’s having
snow.
“If you don’t fish the brackish-water rivers
that feed into Mobile Bay in the wintertime and know
where to fish in those rivers, you won’t catch
many speckled trout,” Captain Gary Davis of Foley,
Alabama, who’s guided and fished for 40 years
on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, says. “Mobile Bay
is a shallow bay full of menhaden, shrimp, croakers
and all types of baitfish that speckled trout love to
eat,” Davis explains. “Since the bay’s
so abundant with baitfish, large numbers of speckled
trout, redfish and flounder stay there all year round.
But when cold weather arrives, baitfish have to leave
to locate warm, deep water to survive, and they won’t
find that in the bay.”
Ralph Havard, biologist aide for Alabama’s Department
of Conservation’s Marine Resources
Division (AMRD), explains, “There are actually
two migrations of baitfish from Mobile Bay up the coastal
river systems each year. When the weather and the water
get hot in Mobile Bay, a good number of baitfish will
leave the bays and move up the rivers in search of thermal
refuges created by deep holes in the rivers where salt
water collects. During times of drought, the salt water
moves up the rivers, is then trapped in these deep holes
and provides not only salt-water refuges, but also thermal
refuges for baitfish, speckled trout and redfish. During
the winter months, these same salt-water holes in the
fresh-water estuaries are warmer than the surface temperature
of the water. Most of the river systems that feed Mobile
Bay have these deep-water refuges occurring naturally
in them. For instance, baitfish move up the Blakely
River, into an area known as the Kings Battery, during
the summertime when there’s zero salinity on the
surface and 10 parts per thousand salinity on the bottom,
which is about 60- or 70-feet deep there. You’ll
find areas like this throughout most of Alabama’s
coastal rivers. All these deep-water refuges will hold
speckled trout and redfish during the winter months.”
Other places that Havard mentions concentrate trout
and redfish along Alabama’s Coast in the winter
include: the Dog River in Mobile County; Hall’s
Mill and Rabbit creeks; the Theodore Industrial Canal,
which has a 50-foot-deep channel; and, the East and
the West Fowl rivers. At the forks of the Fowl River,
close
to Bellingrath Gardens on the western shore of Mobile
Bay, a deep hole there will provide a productive place
to fish during the wintertime where anglers can catch
limit-size trout. Because of the second migration of
baitfish into these deep holes in the cold weather,
Havard believes twice as many baitfish hold in these
salt-water refuges in the winter months as during the
summer months.
Anglers may think that as heavy winter rains drain into
these rivers that the abundance of fresh water will
force trout out of these deep-water holes in the river
systems. But, according to Davis, “Since salt
water is heavier than fresh water, the fish can survive
in those deep-water holes, below the fresh water that’s
coming in over their heads, even after an area has had
a week of heavy rains.”
When planning a trip, check out Tidewater Fishing Service
(Captain Gary Davis), Foley, AL 36535, (251) 943-6298
and www.gulfshores.com,
1-800-745-7263.
Tomorrow: Understand the Trout
Migration Schedule
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