Trout Decline in Texas

Seatrout, easily the most popular coastal fish in Texas, are slowly being overwhelmed by growing fishing pressure. Evidenced by the recent daily bag limit reduction of three fish per angler, they seem to be fighting a losing battle against a growing, billion dollar coastal fishing industry made up of marinas, guides, boat dealerships, tackle stores, bait and ice, live bait, and so on.

Most anglers today don’t realize how many trout were out there years ago, and how few boats, however slow and small they were. When we moved to Port Arthur in 1967, there were no limits on any saltwater fish. We had no boat yet, but I was impressed that autumn when the local paper announced that two boats on Sabine Lake had both caught more than 300 trout in a single day. These were typical under-the-birds schooling trout of that era, of 2-4 pounds, not “pencils,” as smaller trout have been called.

Fast forward 50 years with coastal anglers increasing and the recent boom in boat sales, it seems the TP&W’s regulation of trout harvest has been chasing after the growth curve. More fishermen, not enough conservation, trout too popular, insufficient hatchery fingerlings, more guides, live croaker’s deadly toll, and too many tournaments targeting big female trout. There are lots of factors, and their combined toll has pounded the trout population. Thankfully, there have been only a few large-scale fish kills from freezes or red tides in recent years. But where is this trending?

I would like to talk with a state biologist over a beer and hear what they really think will happen with this downward trend of trout bag limits, but frank commentary from state employees these days, is an outdated concept. Today, one would have to go through a state “communications spokesman,” someone who carefully parses their language to avoid any…political entanglements.

I did talk to long-time friend and colleague Shannon Tompkins, retired outdoor writer from the Houston Chronicle, who has conferred with many biologists over three decades, and he didn’t mince words. “I think the degradation of the bay systems over the past 30-plus years, with multiple environmental disasters (human-caused such as the rape of the oyster fishery) and natural disasters from epic hurricanes, floods and droughts, combined with much-increased fishing pressure and advances in fishing-related technologies, has resulted in a much-less resilient fishery. Trout and other marine life can’t bounce back from population crashes as quickly as they could 35 years ago. Texas’ bay system health is compromised and the fisheries can’t recover as quickly…if, indeed, at all.”

As a rare item on the plus side, a reported 10 million seatrout are raised annually in three coastal hatcheries, and transported to all Texas bays. One wonders how bad the trout (and redfish, for that matter) situation would be without these hatcheries.

So, bag limits across the coast have been whittled to an all-time low of three. Will people still fish? You bet. As one veteran angler on the middle coast put it, “the naysayers declared that a five trout coast-wide trout limit would put the kibosh on the inshore charter fishing industry. Well, it's been several years since that was enacted and the [angler] numbers continue to climb. Now the question is whether the three-fish limit will slow it down.”

>Conservation. There are dedicated wade fishermen who target big trout, and it’s commendable they often release their big fish after a quick picture. These are female spawner trout that can spawn millions of eggs annually, which makes them a precious resource. Big trout are not exactly the tastiest fish in the sea, and I personally will not keep one bigger than 18 inches, which we consider an ideal size. Two of them makes a fried fish dinner for two, with leftovers the next day. Anything bigger than that, and they go back in the water. If one of my clients whines, I explain the trout situation.

In Texas with a permit, one can still keep a trout bigger than 30 inches. We can surmise these older trout have peaked with their egg numbers. Still, a fiberglass mount will last far longer than a skin mount, and even a few thousand eggs from a smart old sow trout is preferable to none.

A great many anglers visiting the coast are not after “trophy trout” and have no concept for conservation, they simply want fish dinners in a local restaurant or back home. With the price of everything these days, including guides and gasoline, people want fish for dinner to show for their efforts, and who could blame them. Trout are tops on their list, followed by redfish and flounder, and anything else (to them) is something of a mystery.

>Tournaments. There are now said to be hundreds of tournaments on the Texas coast with trout on top of the list. Angler effort is extreme during tournaments. Big female trout are the dream target and boats will race many miles to reach the best spots. One of the tournaments lasted some 31 years, before removing trout from competition after the 2021 winter freeze. It’s impossible to imagine the angler hours directed at trout during those decades. (Trout is the fish that launched a thousand boats, metaphorically speaking.)

Years ago I signed up, fearing the trout of a lifetime would grab on if I hadn’t signed up. (Fear being the greatest salesman). One day a big trout grabbed my MirrOlure, wallowing out there in whitewater. It looked huge compared to my normal catches. My boat was 50 yards away and I dutifully carried the fish back to measure it, knowing it would have to be 28 inches or longer to qualify. Instead, it was thick but only 26 inches long, and already expired in the summer heat. We dutifully fried it that night, including the almost-ripe egg sack eight inches long. The fish seemed tasteless and the fried eggs were worse, an acquired taste. I would have released that fish, except for the tournament. Multiply this anecdote among thousands of contestants, times 31 summers.

>More fishermen. There is now something like a million licensed coastal fishermen in Texas. Boat sales skyrocketed during the Covid crisis in 2020, with buyers paying almost any price, and today there are a record number of boats available to chase seatrout.

>Guides. According to TP&W data, the number of Texas fishing guides increased by 25 percent in the past five years. Resident all-water fishing guides in Texas was 1,028 in 2010 and in 2023 that total was 1,720. On a coast less than 400 miles long, most are running big, fast boats tricked out with all manner of modern equipment, including side-scan sonar, big live bait wells, and double Power Poles that save time anchoring.

Not all coastal guides are trout guides, but the majority certainly are, because that’s what the public wants. There are niche guides who fish for sharks, or specialize in jetty redfish. I know two in Port O’Connor who will stop and fish for an hour or two for slot-sized black drum, to supplement their catch. Jetty guides with the typical “six-pack” license can hammer the redfish, often bringing back to the dock their legal limit of 18 reds. But hatchery efforts have kept fishing pressure at bay on redfish, starting back in the late 1980s. Trout in hatcheries began later and haven’t kept up with an overwhelming tide of fishing pressure.

>Freeze events.

There have been annoying fish kills on the middle and lower coasts from winter freezes in 2010, 2011, 2016 and 2021. Not huge freezes, but the trout casualties add up. Very discouraging, when you’re trying to rebuild the trout population. The last one in 2021 hit hardest from East Matagorda Bay down to the Lower Laguna. Seatrout were the most impacted of all sport fish species. Lower Laguna had the highest trout losses, estimated at 104,000 fish. Combined with almost 39,000 trout dying in the upper Laguna, the two bays represented 89 percent of state losses. The upper third of the Texas coast (with deep ship channels) got off lightly by comparison.

Historically, Texas has seen far, far worse fish kills from cold fronts. Like Galveston Bay freezing over in 1886, when a bear was seen walking out on Trinity Bay near Anahuac. Millions of trout were wiped out. There were no ship channels and deep water for them to seek refuge. The freeze lasted an estimated 21 days, according to one report. That’s weather difficult to imagine; we have nothing like it today.

>Live croakers. The rise of croakers as bait is another cautionary tale. People will now pay up to a dollar each for small, live croakers, the go-to trout bait effective even in muddy water. And easy to use; a charter can pitch these baits out into milky water with relatively safe, single hooks, and patiently wait for a bite. Croakers are named for a reason, sending out a low-pulse distress sound that travels well underwater. There’s little doubt that millions of Texas trout have been caught with croakers. Years ago, anchored in murky surf, we watched a nearby angler with four kids in a 20-foot Wellcraft catching trout on every cast. The daily bag limit back then was 10 fish and they appeared to limit out. Meanwhile, our artificials landing close by caught nothing.

Concerning trout, my only suggestion for now is the obvious: ‘Hey. People. Leave them trout alone.’ There are plenty of other fish species out there, many of them more tasty than trout. If you target big trout go barbless, treat it gently, get it back in the water quickly, and hold it upright until it swims away.

Recently a friend caught his lifetime trout. It was a thick and ponderous sow that fought like a redfish, measuring 32 inches in the water. He couldn’t easily weigh it or take pictures (he was in a kayak) and so that trout never qualified as an all-time record for his fishing club. He says that doesn’t matter; it was more important to see the great fish swim away.