Summer specks (pictured below) spread out over a vast area and a variety of bottom. Start on deeper grassflats with lots of "blonde" potholes.

When I was a newlywed, my wife thought that she had married a weather geek because I watched The Weather Channel so much. Ten years and a thousand fishing trips later, she doesn’t ask that question anymore. If I’m tuned in, it’s because I want to predict where the trout will turn on!

I love Texas coastal waters because I can catch speckled trout in relatively shallow water during the cold of winter, the blistering heat of summer, day and night, when it’s blowing, when it’s not. With the exception of Florida, where else can you do that?

The key is to follow the fish to their choice of bay bottom on any given day. As is the case in Florida (and other Gulf and Atlantic coastal states come to think of it), Texas’ coastal bays have all kinds of bottom configurations. Whether mud, oyster shell, sand, grass, or a combination thereof, all of these bottom types can hold an appreciable number of seatrout throughout the year. However, savvy anglers come to know exactly when a certain “trout bottom” will pay off best. And as always, water temperature, and its effects on baitfish availability, plays a huge role in whether you will hit a trout here and a trout there, or hit the mother lode.

Summer Spreads ’Em Out

Texas summers get hot enough to dissuade even the most hardcore anglers among us, but if you can weather the heat, there’s a good chance you will stumble into some speckled trout. The reason is, trout gravitate toward a wide array of bottom, including grass, shell, and mud during the summer. They can be more widespread now than ever.

On a mid-summer day this season, friends Mike Trevathan, Mark Collins, Eddie Sullivan and I arrived at the Hump in West Matagorda Bay just as the sun was breaching the horizon. To get to the Hump, we ran 32 miles in the dark one-way. Why? It’s been our experience that the Hump has been a trout magnet from May through September. It is a grassy sand flat in the middle of the bay, with depths ranging from one to five feet, and surrounded by water ranging from 6 to 14 feet. It is flanked by the Port O’Connor jetty and Pass Cavallo, so there is lots of moving water to keep the water cool and oxygenated. As the tide rises and falls, shrimp, mullet and other baitfish are ushered onto and off of the bar. Baitfish find cover and feed in the grass, and hunker undulating on the bay floor to hide from predators such as trout, sharks and jack crevalle, all of which use this structure as ambush points. If you haven’t noticed, spots on a trout blend in well with grass bottom.

On this particular day, an incoming tide was pushing a parade of mullet onto the flat. We knew there were trout, too, given the sweet “watermelon” smell of fresh slicks on the surface of the water. We caught over 100 trout that day, mostly on walking plugs and stick baits. When we returned to Matagorda Harbor, Capt. Bill Pustejovsky was filleting a big catch of trout, too. Yet, he had only burned a few gallons of gas to get to the shell-covered mid-bay reefs in East Matagorda Bay. That’s the dilemma Texas summertime trout fishing presents—the fish can be found over sand, grass, shell and mud. However, mud bottom can make trout as happy as hogs in a wallow on a summer day.

Shell reefs are often surrounded by mud, and shrimp burrow in the mud to hide from predators. Plus, trout are drawn to mud bottom in the summer when tides are at their lowest and water and air temperatures are at their highest. It may surprise you to know that mud is actually cooler than the surface temperature of the water. If you doubt this, take off your wading shoes and sink your toes in the cool mud bottom during the summer. The mud cools the lower water column as the tide floods a flat.

When southwest winds persist in July in Texas, and tides drop to more than a foot below normal, you won’t find trout on the shallow shorelines. The water is much too hot. The smart angler finds a soft, muddy bottom and works from there. The temperature change from the grassflats to the mud bottom may only be one degree; however, one degree can make all the difference in the world when extremes are at play.