Fish o' the Day - spotted seatrout

With the oil beginning to wash up on the shores of Dauphin Island, and friends and students reporting a slick less than 10 miles off the Pensacola beaches, it seems appropriate to spend a couple of FODs paying tribute to some of the great fish of the Gulf Coast. Quite honestly, fish have always been a big part of the coast experience. I'm afraid that won't the the same for a while.

A long time ago (about 35 years ago, if you must know), my friends and I spent a few remarkable summers wade-fishing the seagrass beds of Santa Rosa Sound in search of spotted seatrout, or "specks", as everyone along the coast knows them. The first day that I stumbled on our "honey-hole", I waded out in waist deep water and started casting a top-water lure over a dense Thalassia bed. About ten casts later, I was landing a gator speck that would have pushed 10 pounds. Through that summer and the next, we caught a lot of really beautiful fish. Then, very suddenly it seemed, they were gone. Hours of fishing would produce only a couple of smallish fish. We blamed the gill-netters that had descended on the same waters in numbers, and there was probably some truth to that argument. Certainly, the fish seemed to have made a bit of a comeback since Florida's ban on gill-netting passed in 1994. Now this. I fear they'll be a long time coming back.

The spotted seatrout, Cynoscion nebulosus, is not a trout at all, but a member of the Family Sciaenidae. That's the drums, the family that contains the redfish and the Atlantic croaker. They're sleaker and more streamlined than most of the drums, actually bearing a superficial resemblance to the trout and salmon. One of their most distinctive features is the pair of large, canine teeth at the front of the upper jaw. The body is silvery, with many small dark spots over over the upper part of the back and extending onto the fins. Unlike many of the drums, there are no chin barbels. They can reach lengths of 3 feet weigh and can weigh over 15 pounds, but a 3-pound speck is a nice one. Juveniles feed primarily on small crustaceans, while the adults take small fish and shrimp.

Seatrout reach maturity from 1-4 years of age, depending on sex and location, and spawn in coastal waters and estuaries. They're a classic example of a fish that depends on estuaries, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes as nursery habitats. They're reasonably tolerant of a wide range of environmental conditions - I guess we're about to find out how tolerant they are of oil.