David Barnes displays the kind of trout he regularly catches while wading the Panhandle bays. Photo by Jimmy Jacobs

Growing up in Alabama, I used to sit at my grandfather's feet and listen to his stories of catching ice chests full of speckled trout from the Intracoastal Waterway near Panama City. He would talk of catching those fish, which are correctly called spotted seatrout, during the winter months when the water was cold as ice.

I do not think Granddaddy, as I called him, ever visited the Gulf Coast during the spring and summer to trout fish. I am certain wintertime fishing was great, but summertime fishing is every bit as good. It just takes knowing where the fish are and figuring out what they will bite.

A lot of things have changed over the years, but one that has not is that spotted seatrout leave the shallow bays and flats of the Gulf shores during the winter and head to warmer water in estuarine creeks and rivers. By mid-March to early April, the reverse happens and trout return to our bays and grass flats. There they stay for the summer months.

Techniques for catching seatrout from Pensacola to the St. Marks area of Apalachee Bay are quite constant, due to the wide expanse of grass flats along this Panhandle coast. Where things are a bit different are in regions of oyster and rock bottoms from the Apalachicola area over to the mouth of the St. Marks River.

PENSACOLA
Hunter Armour has fished the coastal flats near Pensacola for more years than he cares to remember. He's been a guide the last 14 and takes the majority of his clients who want to catch spotted seatrout to Big Lagoon, a shallow body of water that is protected on the south by Perdido Key and stretches north to the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

While the lagoon runs 5 to 6 feet deep in places, Armour said the majority of the water is only 3 to 5 feet deep.

If his clients bring their kids, he likes to rig them a cork and live "hopper" shrimp.

"Some of these kids have never caught a trout, or anything else for that matter. It's really fun watching them," Armour said. "Sometimes, I'll put them up near some of the docks where you are apt to catch trout."

For any of his anglers who can throw a cast, Armour encourages them to tie on artificials -- such as soft grubs -- or use live shrimp.

"Trout are pretty predictable during the summer. The water is warmer, and depending on the tides, first thing in the morning they're usually going to be out feeding on the grass flats or hunkered down in the troughs on the flats. If you're there and you don't do anything to run them off, it's usually just a matter of if they're hungry or not," the guide explained.

Armour feels the building boom on the lagoon and adjoining coastal waters has produced pollution that has taken a toll on spotted seatrout numbers. He used to catch an occasional 7- to 8-pound trout, but he has not done that in four or five years.

Chris Phillips is another area guide and quite often takes clients in pursuit of seatrout out. He fishes several miles to the east of Big Lagoon in Santa Rosa Sound. Santa Rosa Sound is long, several miles wide, and stretches from the Pensacola Beach/Gulf Breeze Bridge to the Okaloosa County line. The sound is buffered on the south by Santa Rosa Island.