For inshore anglers, ice forming on the rod guides normally means that their chances of catching any fish that day are about as good as finding a sympathetic IRS auditor. In many cases they’re right.

This lean trout is sure to fatten up on the baitfish that also head inland for tolerable water temps found in Florida's Big Bend rivers.

But, for those chasing spotted seatrout, ice can be a good thing. In fact, it can indicate that some of the best trout fishing of the year is getting ready to happen.

There is a normal in-and-out seasonal migration pattern for winter trout, in Florida and elsewhere along both the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts, and it all depends upon water temperature. The fish stay in deeper waters during the summer when it’s hot and they’ll be on the shallow flats during the spring and fall when it is temperate. If it gets extremely cold they’ll head into the rivers, and they can really stack up in certain spots. When that happens you’ve got a lot of trout in a small, defined area and since the bigger trout are just as affected by the temperature as the schoolie trout, they’ll be there, too. It can create some of the best trout fishing of the year.

Florida’s Big Bend region is a perfect example. Rivers, here, can host a winter troutfest once Old Man Winter arrives. The Waccasassa, Suwannee and Steinhatchee are among the best known, but at the top of the Big Bend the Aucilla and Ecofina rivers will also produce. They, however, are not the only areas that can hold trout.

If there isn’t a major river nearby trout will use smaller tidal creeks. They may be just little swamp creeks, but they’ll have deeper holes. The maze of small creeks at the mouth of the Suwannee River is famous for this, but there are creeks and small rivers all along the Big Bend. Some of these creeks may not be over a couple of boat widths wide, but if you can find an 8- or 10-foot hole in there you’ll likely find some trout. Those little creeks get overlooked, but the fact that they are shallow, and mostly mud-bottomed, means that sunlight will warm those waters a lot faster than the Gulf waters or the larger rivers. They can hold a lot of winter fish.

The winter river run usually starts during the first significant cold snap, generally sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving. This initial movement is normally to the deeper holes near the rivermouth. Where they go from there depends on the weather that follows.

A cold snap will move a lot of trout into the lower rivermouth holes, but it takes several days of cold weather—a serious freeze—to move them upriver and hold them there. In some years we don’t get that prolonged freeze, so the trout don’t stay in the rivers very long. What they will do is move into the lower river on a brief cold snap, and then drift back onto the flats near the rivermouth during warming spells.

If Canada sends the Gulf Coast a serious Christmas present in the form of a major multi-day freeze, the picture changes considerably. The colder the weather, and the longer it stays, the farther upriver they will go. In some cases they get so far back that they are almost in pure fresh water. As the weather warms they’ll start to move back down the river toward the mouth. All they are doing is moving from one deep hole to the next—upriver in the cold, and downriver as it warms. When it warms up enough, they are out of the river and onto the rivermouth flats. Understand that basic pattern and you’ll have no trouble finding winter trout in Florida’s Big Bend, or anywhere else where trout reside for that matter.