Thread: Fishing at night for speckled trout

Greetings! I've enjoyed all of the information I've gathered from this page, and I am anxious for my first trip to Gulf Shores during the first week of July.

I have a question-does anybody fish for speckled trout at night under the lights? Here in Texas, this is a very popular and productive way to fish, as the specks congregate in the lights and hammer jigs, DOA shrimp, Gulp, and especially live shrimp/croaker/mullet/pinfish. I'll really only be fishing with lures though. So far I've seen that Spanish Mackerel are caught this way, but I haven't seen anything on night fishing for specks under the lights.

Y'all have a beautiful beach and I can't wait to wet a line. Tight lines, and y'all be safe during Alberto.

The most trout I've seen caught on artificials from the GSPPier were on topwaters, and that was only a few.
Just sayin...

Night fishing under lights is a common thing in the summer, but you need a boat or a pier with lights (on a bay or intracoastal).

I find that lures don't stay in the strike zone long enough to be nearly as effective as live bait when fishing for speckled trout from the pier. Because the lights face straight down and because the pier is so high, relatively speaking, from the water, your lure is finding it's way back to the surface just when you need it to be down where the fish are. Way back in the day, I used to cope with that issue by casting more parallel to the pier (north/south) than perpendicular (east/west) to the rail. That means that you'd have to be the only person fishing, pretty much (since you'd cross the lines of other fishermen), but even if you're all alone on the pier, fishing for trout with lures is still a lot less productive than fishing with live bait, from my perspective. I like great big live shrimp best, but I've also had luck with scaled sardines and small pinfish.
That said, when I fish for specks in Little Lagoon or other bays and inlets, I like paddle-tail plastic baits best. I've also caught them on Mirrolure-type finger mullet imitators and curly tailed plastics on lead-headed jigs. You may hear from other fishermen who'll tell you that the "pets" underneath the lights won't hit lures. They will, but because of the previously described dynamics, it's just really tough fishing and they seem to become inured to repeated casting efforts and then pay your lure no attention at all.

The ladyfish have been so thick the last couple of nights that a live shrimp is doomed before the specks get brave enough to bite. There are good nights and bad nights but if the water is clear the trout at the pier get hammered pretty hard all through the day. At night a few sight seers will "help" you with spotlights, playing the drums on the rails, dropping nylon coated pyramid weight rigs on them (right by your live shrimp), throwing huge spoons, gotchas etc. to generally spook the bejeezus out of them. Pinfish, pigfish, hartails, ladyfish,catfish and small jacks will either eat your shrimp or nibble its legs off before it can get eaten by a speck so bring lots of them. Pinfish will even eat the eyes out of croaker and scaled sardines(LY). I have my best luck from 2am-when most of the sober people have left until around 4:30am-when the first mackerel hunters start showing up. Good luck!

I really appreciate all the info folks. Thank you.