Through the final quarter of the past century and first quarter of this one, Texas’ speckled trout fishery was dealt some ugly cards. Once the nation’s chip leader in trophy trout, the Lone Star’s fat stack took some hard beatings from mostly natural events and a few metaphoric sharks. This past year, intent on bettering the odds, the state pushed all-in for a full recovery of its most popular saltwater gamefish.
Freezes dating back to the 1980s rocked Texas’ trout population to its core multiple times in recent history. And each time, within a few years, the fishery recovered—sort of. The rebounds were significant, but anglers on the upper Texas coast noticed numbers of higher-end fish dropped dramatically.
Moderate changes to daily bag limits and minimum lengths replenished the bulk of the fishery in quantity, but most of those trout were not head-turners. And for people old enough to remember “every cast” days of truly huge fish in every major bay system along 700 miles of Texas coastline, keepers don’t cut it.
Cold Kills
At the time of this writing, the state’s most recent fishing-killing freeze in February 2021 was fatal to some 3.8 million fish, including more than 160,000 speckled trout. That forced the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s hand in the matter.
Two years later, only from mid-March to the end of August in 2023, limits were reduced to three fish within a 17- to 23-inch slot with no retention of fish longer than 23 inches. On Sept. 1 of the same year, however, the limit reverted to five fish daily, 15 to 25 inches each, with no more than one of those five longer.
As 2024 approached, and still not certain that recovery was happening as planned, the TPWD considered and presented several options at public meetings. The department ultimately gambled on a plan it knew would ruffle feathers. I believe some opposition was to be expected no matter what.
Commission approval came in January 2024, and Texas’ new regulations went into effect on March 26. Since then, the daily bag limit has been just three fish, each of which must fit into a narrow 15- to 20-inch slot. Additionally, to appease an increasingly small group, the state also created a bonus tag that allows retention of one fish longer than 28 inches per license year. For those so inclined, that keeps the record book open.
The Seatrout Fallout
Knee-jerk reaction to the restrictions was as expected. No rule change, as anyone who makes rules knows, goes unchallenged. Some people didn’t like the bottom of the slot; some didn’t like its top. Some even bemoaned the restriction on trophy fish.
Sport fishermen claimed the reduction from five fish to three would rob them of tasty meals—despite a decades-consistent reality that the average Texan who leaves home intent on catching speckled trout catches one per day. They were bluffing, playing into gut-shot straights and not convincing anyone they’d catch three or five fish in a day. Fishing isn’t as easy as good guides and live croakers make it appear.
Guides whose clients measure success in fillets felt equally betrayed by the TPWD’s shortened stringers, many of them believing their businesses would surely fail if they couldn’t stack trout like cordwood on cleaning tables and share photos on social media. To date, I don’t know of any professional guides who’ve shut down since the shuffle.
Positives Outweigh Negatives
Only a few months after the new rules went into effect, with a tremendous boost from nature’s provision of abundant forage coastwide, several optimistic cards hit the table.
First, there came the uplifting realization that whatever number of seatrout remained after the 2021 ice bath devoted all their spare time to reproducing. Not surprisingly, little trout were just about everywhere.
Most anglers agreed this was good, but concern lingered over when and where any rebound of bigger—much bigger—trout might happen. For a time, fish longer than 25 inches or so had nearly disappeared from all but a handful of the oldest traditional haunts along the southern half of the Texas coast.
By late summer of this past year, however, and clearly a result of mandatory release efforts for every trout beyond 20 inches, the numbers of quality fish increased from Sabine Lake to Port Isabel. The department’s well-researched gamble was working, and at a pleasantly surprising pace for everyone at the table.
Curious about anglers’ feelings toward the new limits going into 2025, I asked the question on my radio show (weekend mornings on SportsTalk790 in Houston). Overwhelmingly, the response was favorable, even from a few people who admitted being against the change at first but coming totally on board as time passed.
One man, Roy Wilks, brought up an interesting point about the TPWD deciding on three trout daily to boost recovery. In 1989 and 1990, after years of frustration over depleted inshore redfish stocks, the department shifted the daily bag on that species from five to three within a 20- to 28-inch slot. Coincidentally, those redfish regulations included a tag for retention of one oversize fish annually.
That was necessary after several years when redfish were scarce in Texas bays because of overfishing both inshore and against spawning stock in the nearshore Gulf of Mexico. Great fishermen struggled to catch one or two reds daily despite a five-fish bag. Since then, red drum have recovered nearly to the point that you can’t throw a rock into the bay without hitting one.
If redfish can do it, so can trout, despite them being a bit more delicate, plus cannibalistic to a fault—which makes them more difficult to rear in hatcheries.
Redfish thrive in captivity, and thanks to work by the Coastal Conservation Association and other concerned groups over the past four decades, the TPWD released its one-billionth redfish fingerling this past July. Trout are more or less on their own and on their way back in grand fashion.
Read Next: Top 10 Speckled Trout Lures
A Turning Tide
The CCA supported the change for trout to expedite recovery of San Antonio Bay and Matagorda Bay, which hadn’t yet recovered from the 2021 freeze, and in support of being proactive during an extended period of major population growth. Other organizations such as Release Over 20 (releaseover20.org) try to influence anglers to release mature speckled trout, flounder, red drum, stripers and other species via science and rewards programs.
Perhaps the most beneficial card in the Texas department’s hand now is a dramatic shift in favor of catch-and-release of the biggest trout in the bays, giving those fish free passes to excite more and more anglers for as long as they live.
Barring severe weather over the next two winters, prospects for a return to 28-inch and greater seatrout in all the state’s bay systems are quite good. The wild card in 2025 was the wintry weather Texas experienced in late January. Population increases will be offset by increased awareness of conservation and, I believe, an acceptance of three trout as being enough. The TPWD has asked recreational fishermen more than once if they’d like to revisit the redfish limit, and sportsmen have declined each time.
Also, despite having the option to kill a giant trout, most fishermen I’ve asked say they wouldn’t use that tag. In less than a year, Texas anglers already see benefit from the TPWD’s latest bet for speckled trout, and former naysayers are mucking their cards—all the way to the boat ramp.
