Also known as Speckled Trout, Specks, Sea Trout. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Hero spots in our coverage where Spotted Seatrout is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.
Out of season across our covered spots in May. Check back in September.
Grass flats: drift or wade-fish over turtle-grass and shoal-grass beds in 2–5 ft, casting popping corks or soft plastics. The "popping cork" — a weighted cork that rattles when twitched — is the textbook Gulf method; the noise mimics feeding fish and brings trout in. For "gator" trout (24"+), switch to bigger topwater plugs at dawn / dusk over deeper grass edges. Wading at dawn with topwater is the most satisfying way to catch them.
Moving tide is critical — incoming and outgoing both work, but slack is dead. The first push of incoming over grass flats brings shrimp and small bait fish in, and trout feed actively. In Florida bays, the run-out tide pulling water off the flats into deeper channels concentrates fish at the drop-offs.
Spotted seatrout are moderately moon-influenced. Spring tides push fish further onto flats and create stronger feeding windows; dawn solunar majors line up well with first light feeding bursts. The big "gator" trout are most active in the few days around new moons, statistically.
Florida: 15" minimum (some zones), 3 per person — slot rules vary by zone (NW Florida had 15–19" slot in recent years). Texas: 15" minimum, 5 per person (currently — verify TPWD). Louisiana: 12" minimum, 25 per person. Always verify state agency rules; trout populations have been pressured by red tides and the rules have tightened. NC, SC and other SE states have their own bag and slot rules.
From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-14.
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