Baits and Tactics
ANGLERS like Kelly cast for specks from boats, kayaks
and canoes, but they also wade and cast along inlet
banks and surf sloughs. Bill Trask, a Wrightsville
Beach native and lifelong light-tackle veteran, fishes
from his flats boat.
“Depending on the tide and wind, I use swimbaits on jig heads,
and switch occasionally to hard plastic lures that suspend in a
current,” he says. “Given a choice, I like a 17MR MirrOdine hard
plastic minnow with a twitching retrieve.”
Queried on where he likes to fish, he replies, “Well, on any given
day I fish from Rich’s Inlet to Swan Quarter depending on the
bite.” That’s a span of 173 miles if someone wants to follow him to
his favorite trout hole.
Trask and other veteran anglers use lures of one-eighth to
one-half ounce, attached on the terminal end to a 3-foot section
of fluorocarbon leader with a nonslip loop knot. In cold water,
braided line, attached to the leader with a uni knot, is preferred
over monofilament because it remains pliable and doesn’t develop
memory.
Speckled trout legend Toney Lanier preferred wade fishing.
She was known to walk for hours along barrier inlets looking for
structure rips, and bars that held fish. Typically, she used a sinking
green twitch bait “52” series MirrOlure but just in case she kept a
running inventory of colors and patterns in her tackle box.
One of her favorite spots was Topsail Inlet’s north shoal where
she could be found on some of the coldest, most brutal days of the
year fishing with another trout veteran, Graham Farmer.
“We found a rising tide was most productive, so we tried to arrive
at dead low water and fish up the rise,” Farmer says. “We liked
Topsail and Rich’s inlets and the sloughs on Hutaff Island, but we
fished lots of other places.”
Lanier was a technical angler. “When fishing for trout, I choose
a 50-yard stretch of water, and I cast a half-circle, 180-degree
pattern,” she once said. “I fish it degree by degree, running a lure
through every foot of water until I find fish.”
Toney Lanier preferred wade fishing for speckled trout and
frequented Topsail and Rich’s inlets.
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COURTESY GRAHAM FARMER