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Jettybandit · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:31 pm Post subject: Question about schools of trouts

What exactly causes fish such as sea trouts to school is heavy numbers? Is it a combination of baits , weather, and something else? I ask this cause the last couple of days trips I have made the trouts were heavily schooled up at bob hall pier around the same time being 2 am to 5 am. I saw plenty of bait but what is the other connecting factor that I am looking for? I believe also the color of the water had something to do with it too but I can't be sure. So far I have narrowed a few connections but maybe there is another fish theorist out there that can add to this.

As for an update on aug 8th into 9th the trouts were very plentiful at bob hall pier at night and over at packery channel black tips were being caught along with undersized trouts during the morning.
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Hey that gull took your bait

ironmanstan · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:58 am Post subject:

You wouldn't believe the amount of people who think Trout don't school up but they do, the reason for it I really cant say but I'm sure there are more than one.
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bulldog1935 · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 4:31 am Post subject:

trout live pretty much in one spot in the bays until they're big enough to join a passing school.
In schools, they travel 25 mi/day to find enough food, in and out of the bays, migrating up and down the coast over the year.
I don't remember ever filleting a female trout from a school.
The big lone sows stake out a breeding/feeding turf.

You can always catch nursery trout just about anywhere in the bays, and especially from the piers.
And you especially witness schooling trout pier fishing over a night.
You'll be catching nursery trout on and off, then the school sweeps through, and you begin catching 17"-20" fish.

Why? protection and ambush feeding on schools of baitfish.
In the surf at Cedar Bayou one year, I caught a 20" trout that had been filleted down one side by a shark. Most of that gill was gone, gut sack was intact, and the filleted side was scarred over with red tissue.
I got one fillet from the other side.
In one blackwater day in the surf, calm, low tide, witnessed daisy chains of trout nose to tail, surfing the wave crests into the beach. Didn't even have to cast - could daub a fly in front of them and catch fish. The finger mullet were hiding around your legs, and all facing out.

Donnie · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:19 am Post subject:

My brother and my fishing buds, saw this in the 60's on bob hall - pretty cool.
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Don - permanent prescription of salt water therapy.

bulldog1935 · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:06 pm Post subject:

my girls, too, from about 4-y-o
(she's 9 here)

and speaking of schoolies, she's 12 here, with 4 17" males, on the falling tide at the marker 60 pass to LHL

When we were fishing a dock on Arroyo last fall, a long cast to the edge of the light would get a half-dozen nursery trout hits on the way in, then right in front of your face, just at the dock, you'd see 4 or 5 schoolies make arcing strikes from the deep.

Jettybandit · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:20 am Post subject:

I appreciate the feedback everyone. I guess I will play some more fishing bingo and see if I can maybe learn the behavioral trend of schooling to give myself a better chance of landing the keepers and avoiding the dinkers.
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Hey that gull took your bait

bulldog1935 · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 7:12 am Post subject:

go to troutsupport.com, and learn from Tobin about tide movement, and fish movement and feeding patterns. Personally, I learned the hard way, but he's done a good job of producing educational videos, as well as a great lure for big trout that's fun to fish.

I mentioned our dock at Arroyo last fall. 3 of us took kayaks, paddled and fished in the day, but we really tore them up from the lighted dock at night. We were alternating between live shrimp, spec rigs (I caught a trout/snook double on a spec rig), and Tobin's bone-diamond-glow TSL grasswalker on a weighted swimbait hook.

TheDude · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 7:48 pm Post subject:

TheDude · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 7:56 pm Post subject:

I believe this was the link. Interesting read nonetheless...

https://fishgame.com/2016/11/the-trout-migrated-out-for-the-winter-maybe-not/
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bulldog1935 · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 9:23 pm Post subject:

however, that's not what I said.
Especially the young and the females hang around. Except for the current record caught in Lower Laguna Madre in summer, all the previous records were caught in Baffin Bay in the winter, and people targeting record trout have traditionally fished in the winter.
The close of the article also shows it was written with a bias to promote catch-and-release fishing, which in itself is certainly not a bad thing, especially release of females (any trout over about 23"). If you look at their numbers, their statistics are lousy, and they don't really have a theory except to state maybe this, which between the lines has to equally imply maybe that. They can't even tell you when and where trout spawn without maybe. They also don't state what size fish they tagged.
The one grad student who used electronic tracking in her original thesis concluded,

bulldog1935 · Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 6:33 am Post subject:

If you want another demonstration of schooling trout, go tie yourself to a platform in Aransas bay just before dawn. This is especially productive in the fall, when schools are migrating.
When the school arrives, your sounder will turn black in the mid-water column.