Originally published February 22, 2025

2024 Fall spotted sea trout season in the Lowcountry of South Carolina was epic! With so many hundreds of fish to the net and released on the fly I learned a few new things that I would love to share. Being a fly tyer I love to create beautiful creations and fish them, but practically speaking I am more of a fisherman, so the most important thing is that they catch the fish! Of course, this is just my experience and opinion based on my field time. 

1. Cary with you flies that are big and small, both weighted and unweighted, light and dark colors. You need to be prepared to cover the water column and a variety of situations to find where the fish are holding on a specific day and what size prey they want. Some days they are in an eddy and a lightly weighted fly will work, other days I got them in hard current holding deep and getting down to them was critical to a hook up. On more than one occasion they were hammering finger mullet, so a larger fly was optimal, but just as many times a small shrimp will do the trick. 
2. I personally prefer natural materials, nothing moves like a natural material in the water, and you practically do not have to even move the fly for it to move by itself in the water. By the end of the 2024 season the only synthetic material I was adding to the flies was flash and maybe a few rubber legs.  
3. Enjoy the process of learning new places and techniques and stay positive at all times. Stick with it and you will surely get on the fish. There is nothing more rewarding than tying your own flies and checking with the fish if they are acceptable. 

The Flies:

The Clouser:

Ok we can stop right here, if all you had was this fly in white, and white and chartreuse in your box you would probably kill it. There were not many speckled trout laid up on the grass line of an outgoing creek mouth in the low country that refused this drifting by. When I fish the creeks, I dead drift it, for the surf give it a lot of erratic action as it was intended to be fished by the person who invented this pattern. I had good results with white or white and chartreuse for stained water, darker colors like dark purple and black for heavily stained water, and white and purple for ultra clear water. 

Some further examples of Clouser flies that work for me for speckled trout mainly tied on #4 and #2 hooks were: 

The next type of fly that I found to be extremely effective is Lefty’s deceiver. I tied these in a variety of sizes from 3″ – 5″, I especially like this pattern on lower tides and right at daybreak if I see speckled trout pushing baitfish at the surface. Colors that work very well are white, chartreuse, yellow, and purple. 

The third kind of fly that was amazing is the bucktail hollow fleye invented by Bob Popovics. Instead of tying these very large I downsized them on a hook suitable for the speckled trout. This fleye is stunning in its simplicity and profile, it has become one of my favorite patterns to fish and tie. If you tie it in the bulkhead method, it pushes a lot of water, and this attribute helped me land a lot of fish pre-dawn. 

There is no absolute right or wrong answer when it comes to fly fishing for speckled trout. Have fun with the process and share some information with others about your experience! 

Tight lines,

Capt. Randy Klimek

An example of a fly box I would take with me while wading in the 2024 season for speckled trout. 

Clear water killers

A few speckled trout on the fly: