Inshore & surf · Saltwater
Spotted seatrout
Cynoscion nebulosus
Native estuarine-resident sciaenid of the western Atlantic and Gulf. Unusually estuary-bound for a coastal predator: agency accounts describe Georgia and Florida populations with small home ranges that rarely move far from the estuary they were spawned in, while Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina populations show seasonal migration driven by temperature and reproduction.
Also called Speckled trout, speck, spotted weakfish.
- Inshore
- Regulated context
- 4 of 4 overlays reviewed
- Reviewed 2026-08-27
Before you target this fish
Regulated context — check the rules for the exact water
Where this applies Every Atlantic and Gulf coastal state manages spotted seatrout independently; Florida subdivides its own coast into nine management regions with different bag limits and different closed seasons.
The reviewed context, unedited
Regulations are region-scale, not state-scale. Under Florida's rules the statewide slot is 15-19 in total length, but the daily bag runs from two to five fish depending on region, the Indian River Lagoon and Northeast regions prohibit possession of any fish over 19 in, the Panhandle region is closed for February, and the Indian River Lagoon region is closed 1 November to 31 December. Confirm the rule for the exact region and date before keeping a fish.
Rules for this fish change at a state line and sometimes inside one. Check the ones that apply to the exact water you are standing on before you act on anything here — this record is biology, not permission.
Take this somewhere
This page is the record. The reading is what happens when you add water, a season and a temperature to it — that is where the families below get ranked against each other instead of just listed.
Those three links carry the fish and nothing else. No conditions were declared on this page, so none travel, and the link says so rather than sending an empty reading.
The half nobody publishes
What this record does not know
Everything else on this page comes from a named agency or peer-reviewed source. This is the other side of that: the questions a reviewer went looking for an answer to and came back without, and the fields the record leaves empty because filling them would mean guessing.
It is here rather than at the bottom because a page that only shows what it knows is easy to read as a page that knows everything. For Spotted seatrout there are 18 of them.
Named by a reviewer
15Somebody looked for this and wrote down that they did not find it.
- Behaviour
Nobody has sourced:
- tide-stage response: no agency or peer-reviewed source located that ties spotted seatrout movement to flooding or ebbing tide, despite the species being an estuarine resident. This is the largest hole in the record.
- cold-front and barometric response with primary-source support
- angling pressure response with primary-source support
- territoriality and aggression: no source located, fields omitted
- water clarity response with primary-source support
- Identification
Nobody has sourced:
- regional colour variation: not described in the agency accounts used here, field omitted
- spawning coloration: no agency source located, field omitted
- a formal in-hand key separating spotted seatrout from sand and silver seatrout beyond spotting pattern
- Forage
Nobody has sourced:
- seasonal diet: no agency or peer-reviewed source located that breaks spotted seatrout diet down by season, so seasonalDiet is left empty rather than invented
- month-by-month diet inside a season, which is system-specific
- complete regional forage-substitution table
- Season
Nobody has sourced:
- tide stage by season: no sourced statement links spotted seatrout seasonal behaviour to flooding or ebbing tide, so no seasonal currentUse field is populated. For a species this estuarine, that is a real hole.
- early_spring entry: nothing in the sources separates it from spring, so it is omitted rather than interpolated
- warm-edge behaviour; the ASMFC preferred band gives a 27 degrees C ceiling but no source located describes what fish do above it
- seasonal forage emphasis, which is not broken out by season in any source used here
Absent from the record
3No reviewer wrote a gap here. The field is simply empty, which is its own answer.
- Water temperature
No agency or peer-reviewed temperature band for Spotted seatrout was found that a review would accept. The reading runs without one rather than borrowing a number from a related fish.
- Identification
No reviewed image. A photograph is only in this catalog when an agency or a named creator labelled the subject, and nobody has cleared one for this species yet.
- Population context
No regional population profile is registered. The species-level reading stands on its own; it does not silently become a local one.
Where the record puts it
Water and range
Inshore
7 reviewed holding classes- Grass flat
- Sand hole
- Marsh edge
- Oyster bar
- Tidal creek
- Creek mouth
- Channel edge
DepthDeeper than red drum in the same estuary. In a Texas lagoon array spotted seatrout averaged about 144 cm depth against about 51 cm for red drum, and used open bay 96.3 percent of the time (Moulton et al. 2017). Fish move into deeper channels, holes and dredged harbours as water cools (ASMFC, TPWD).
Moving waterEstuarine and tide-exposed rather than current-seeking. SCDNR places adults at salt marsh edges and over grass beds, in the vicinity of tidal creek mouths and channels, and over oyster reefs, which are tide-worked features. No agency or peer-reviewed source located for this record states a preferred tide stage for spotted seatrout, and none is asserted here.
LightThe strongest documented behavioural signal in the species. Moulton et al. 2017 recorded a pronounced diel habitat shift: seagrass in daylight 98 percent of the time, bare substrate at night 80 percent of the time, with movement rate rising from about 0.95 m/min by day to about 3.4 m/min at night.
Thermal band
Temperature
No reviewed temperature band
Nobody publishes a preferred or active temperature range for Spotted seatrout that a review would accept. Borrowing one from a related fish would look like knowledge and behave like a guess, so the reading runs without it and says which parts of the answer that weakens.
How it uses water
Behaviour
SCDNR describes adults congregating at specific habitat types rather than holding as isolated individuals. This is habitat-driven aggregation, not obligate schooling.
A predator that becomes progressively piscivorous with size. TPWD: small trout feed primarily on small crustaceans, medium trout on shrimp and small fish, large fish almost exclusively on other fishes. SCDNR gives adults on menhaden, spot, mullet, croaker and mud minnows. The terminal mouth and paired upper-jaw canines are a fish-grabbing apparatus, not a bottom-grubbing one.
Documented diel habitat switching rather than a simple feeding window. Moulton et al. 2017 recorded fish over seagrass 98 percent of the time in daylight and over bare substrate 80 percent of the time at night, with movement rate rising from about 0.95 m/min by day to about 3.4 m/min at night. Night activity is higher; that is a movement and habitat finding, not a catch claim.
Seasonal activityDistribution shifts with temperature and reproduction. TPWD describes the species as relatively non-migratory but moving in response to water temperature and spawning, into deeper bay waters such as dredged harbours and channels as water cools. ASMFC describes fish moving into deeper channels and holes and occasionally offshore to avoid cold stress. Moulton et al. 2017 recorded directed bay-scale movement peaking December through March below 15 degrees C.
Temperature-driven behaviourASMFC gives a preferred range of 15-27 degrees C (59-81 degrees F). The cold edge is sharp and well quantified: Anweiler et al. 2014, working with fish acclimated to 14 degrees C and cooled at an environmentally realistic 1 degree C per day, recorded loss of equilibrium at 3.57 degrees C and mortality at 3.08 degrees C, and in static exposure found 91 percent mortality at 4.25 degrees C against only 4 percent at 5.25 degrees C. That one-degree gap is the mechanism behind documented freeze kills: SCDNR notes excessive cold can cause mass mortalities, and TPWD reported that spotted seatrout suffered higher freeze-related mortality than other game species in the February 2021 Texas event.
Depth movementConsistently deeper than red drum in shared water: a mean of about 144 cm against about 51 cm in the Moulton et al. array, with open bay used 96.3 percent of the time. Deeper still in winter, into channels, holes and dredged harbours.
ClarityNot sourced. ASMFC and PLOS-indexed work associate occurrence with freshwater inflow and salinity, but no agency or peer-reviewed source located here ties spotted seatrout behaviour to water clarity, and none is asserted.
CoverStructural association is documented but weaker than in red drum: Moulton et al. 2017 found red drum showing strong affinity for habitat edges while spotted seatrout preferred bare substrate and deeper open bay. SCDNR nevertheless places adults at marsh edges, grass beds, creek mouths and oyster reefs. The reconciliation is the diel switch, grass by day and bare bottom by night.
Open waterPredominantly an open-bay fish within the estuary, using the deeper unvegetated portions, particularly at night.
Spawning (conservation context)Protracted warm-season spawner. SCDNR gives April through September in moderate salinity in deeper portions of estuaries; TPWD gives late spring to early autumn over seagrass inside the bays, with two-, three- and four-year-old fish making up the bulk of the spawning population; FWC gives inshore spawning March through November. Males generate sound by contracting muscles that vibrate the swim bladder, and that sound draws females to aggregations. Recorded here as conservation context. This record does not describe where those aggregations form, and any such concentration is excluded from target guidance.
Where the general rule stops
- A bag limit that is correct in one Florida region can be wrong in the adjacent one. Region boundaries in this fishery are close together.
- Two Florida regions cap the maximum size outright rather than allowing an oversized fish. Do not assume an oversized allowance exists.
- This species suffers documented mass mortality in freeze events. After a hard winter, local abundance can be a fraction of the previous year and state agencies may act on that.
What it can eat
Forage
- Crustaceans
- Small forage fish
- Larger prey fish
- Zooplankton
A generalist that becomes a specialist with size. TPWD states it plainly: small trout feed primarily on small crustaceans, medium-sized trout on shrimp and small fish, and large fish almost exclusively on other fishes. SCDNR gives adults on menhaden, spot, mullet, croaker and mud minnows, with larger individuals eating progressively more fish. Capacity for any of this is not evidence of a current bait event.
- Feeding style
- Mixed
- Feeding zone
- Mixed
By life stage
- Young of year
- Larvae take zooplankton, primarily copepods (SCDNR, ASMFC). Hall-Scharf et al. 2016 found copepods only in the smallest size class (15-30 mm SL), along with mysids.
- Juvenile
- Hall-Scharf et al. 2016 describe a progressive shift: at 30-75 mm SL toward larger benthic invertebrates, especially hippolytid and palaemonid shrimps and amphipods, with rising proportions of fish; by 75-120 mm SL predominantly piscivorous, with fish and palaemonid shrimps forming the bulk of stomach contents.
- Adult
- SCDNR gives menhaden, spot, mullet, croaker and mud minnows. TPWD gives large fish feeding almost exclusively on other fishes.
Prey sizePrey size tracks gape closely and the transition is early: Hall-Scharf et al. 2016 place the shift to fish between roughly 30 and 120 mm SL, so a fish is largely piscivorous well before it is legal anywhere.
Ontogenetic shiftCopepods and mysids, to benthic shrimps and amphipods, to fish. The catalog larger_prey_fish class belongs to the adult stage.
SubstitutionsForage identity is system-specific: the agency lists differ between South Carolina (menhaden, spot, mullet, croaker, mud minnows) and the Gulf. A complete regional substitution table was not sourced.
Diet capacity is not proof that a bait event is occurring. Observed current forage still comes from a user observation or Hatch Match.
Through the year
Season
Winter
- Where they sit
- Deeper channels, holes and dredged harbours inside the bay system; channel edges adjacent to the grass and marsh used the rest of the year.
- Depth
- Deepest of the year. ASMFC and TPWD both describe movement into deeper water to avoid cold stress.
- Movement
- Moulton et al. 2017 recorded directed bay-scale movement peaking December through March, coinciding with water temperatures below 15 degrees C.
- Temperature
- Below the 15 degrees C floor of the ASMFC preferred band. The lethal edge is close: Anweiler et al. 2014 recorded loss of equilibrium at 3.57 degrees C and death at 3.08 degrees C, with 91 percent mortality at 4.25 degrees C against 4 percent at 5.25 degrees C.
What that changesHorizontal retrieve through the deeper column and live or natural bait suspension in the same water. Surface retrieve has no basis here.
What would count against it
- looking for winter fish on the shallow grass they used in summer
- treating a freeze event as a temporary inconvenience rather than a mortality event
Hard freezes cause mass mortality in this species specifically. SCDNR notes excessive cold can cause mass mortalities and TPWD reported spotted seatrout suffering higher freeze mortality than other game species in February 2021. Local abundance after such an event is not what it was.
Spring
- Where they sit
- Grass flats, marsh edges, creek mouths and oyster reefs as water warms and fish move back out of the deep water.
- Movement
- Directed bay-scale movement continues into spring in the Moulton et al. array.
- Temperature
- Entering the ASMFC preferred band of 15-27 degrees C.
What that changesHorizontal retrieve and live or natural bait suspension over grass; tidal drift bait at creek mouths and channel edges.
What would count against it
- using the onset of the spawning period as a targeting cue
Spawning begins in this window; SCDNR gives April through September and FWC gives March through November inshore. Spawning aggregations are excluded from this record and from target guidance.
Early summer
- Where they sit
- Grass flats and adjacent open bay bottom; marsh edge and oyster reef.
- Light
- The diel habitat switch is the defining pattern: seagrass in daylight, bare substrate at night, with night movement rates roughly three and a half times daytime rates (Moulton et al. 2017).
What that changesHorizontal retrieve at the depth band the fish are using, surface retrieve over shallow grass in low light, stop-and-go for a piscivore that is already hunting fish.
What would count against it
- assuming a night fish and a day fish are using the same bottom type
Inside the spawning period across all three state accounts used here.
Summer
- Where they sit
- Deeper open bay by day and night, grass flats and sand holes within it. Moulton et al. recorded open bay use 96.3 percent of the time and a mean depth of about 144 cm.
- Depth
- Deeper than red drum sharing the same estuary by roughly a metre.
- Temperature
- At or above the 27 degrees C ceiling of the ASMFC preferred band in the southern part of the range. No warm-edge threshold was sourced for this record.
- Light
- Diel habitat switch continues; night movement rates remain the higher of the two.
What that changesHorizontal retrieve through the column, live or natural bait suspension, surface retrieve restricted to low light over shallow grass.
What would count against it
- carrying a shallow-grass approach into midday deep open bay
Late summer
- Where they sit
- Unchanged from summer: deeper open bay with grass and sand holes, marsh edge and oyster reef.
What that changesUnchanged from summer. The spawning period generates no new approach in this record.
What would count against it
- converting the spawning period into a presentation change
The spawning period runs to September in the SCDNR account and to November in the FWC account. Concentrations of spawning fish are excluded from target guidance.
Fall
- Where they sit
- Grass and open bay giving way to deeper bay water, channels and dredged harbours as temperature falls.
- Movement
- TPWD describes fish moving to deeper waters during autumn cooling.
- Temperature
- Falling back through the ASMFC preferred band toward the winter position.
What that changesHorizontal retrieve and live or natural bait suspension, worked progressively deeper as the fish drop.
What would count against it
- assuming the summer depth band still holds fish after a significant cooling
Late fall
- Where they sit
- Deeper channels, holes and dredged harbours; the winter position established.
- Temperature
- Approaching and dropping below the 15 degrees C floor of the preferred band.
What that changesHorizontal retrieve and live or natural bait suspension in the deeper water; stop-and-go where a slower presentation is needed.
What would count against it
- treating late autumn as an extension of the summer grass pattern
The Indian River Lagoon region of Florida is closed to spotted seatrout harvest from 1 November to 31 December, and the Panhandle region is closed for February. Closures in this fishery are region-specific.
Spawning · Spring, Early summer, Summer, Late summer
Protracted warm-season spawner. SCDNR gives April through September in moderate salinity in the deeper portions of estuaries; TPWD gives late spring to early autumn with spawning inside the bays over seagrass; FWC gives inshore spawning March through November. Males produce sound by contracting muscles that vibrate the swim bladder. Recorded as conservation context only; no spawning or staging concentration is described in this record.
Recorded as conservation context. No spawning site, staging concentration or migration bottleneck is named anywhere in this catalog, because naming one is how a population gets fished out.
Telling it apart
Identification
What to look at
- Numerous round black spots scattered irregularly over the back and sides, continuing onto the soft dorsal fin and the caudal fin. The spots are many, small and disorganised, not one discrete ocellus.
- A pair of large canine teeth at the tip of the upper jaw (FWC). This is a reliable in-hand trait.
- No barbels on the lower jaw, which separates the fish from the bottom-feeding drums.
- Dark grey or green above with bluish reflections, shading to silvery white below.
- Average adult length
- SCDNR gives an average of about 14 in and 1.3 lb in South Carolina. FWC gives a typical size of about 14 in. TPWD reports growth to about 21 in for males and about 28 in for females by age 10, with females growing faster.
- Common angling size
- State slot limits concentrate retained fish tightly; Florida's slot is 15-19 in total length. Fish at the agency-reported average of about 14 in sit just below that.
- Typical weight
- About 1-2 lb at the agency-reported average length; slot-sized fish commonly 1-3 lb.
- Maximum documented
- FWC gives a maximum recorded length of about 39 in at 17 lb, with a Florida state record of 17 lb 7 oz. The Texas rod-and-reel record is 37.25 in and 15.6 lb (TPWD). The South Carolina record is 11 lb 13 oz (SCDNR).
- Longevity
- SCDNR gives a maximum of roughly 8-10 years. TPWD gives 9-10 years. Maturity is reached at about one year in South Carolina and about two years in Texas.
What it gets confused with
- Weakfish (Cynoscion regalis)
- Weakfish lack the discrete round black spots running onto the dorsal and caudal fins that define spotted seatrout; their markings are smaller, more diffuse and body-confined. FWC uses the spotting pattern extending onto the dorsal fins and tail as the separator.
- Red drum
- Red drum have one or more black ocellated spots confined to the tail region, a copper cast, and an inferior horizontal mouth with no prominent canines. Spotted seatrout have many scattered spots over the whole back and fins and a terminal mouth with large upper-jaw canines.
- Sand seatrout and silver seatrout (Cynoscion arenarius, C. nothus)
- These congeners lack the heavy scattered black spotting of spotted seatrout. Spot pattern is the working field key within the genus; this catalog does not hold reviewed records for them.
What follows from all of that
Presentation families
Inshore
Horizontal retrieve
Move a swimming bait through a chosen depth band along structure or open water.
- count down
- steady or pulsing retrieve
- keep the band
- cover the edge
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- Moderate
- Sensitivity
- Moderate
- Casting distance
- Moderate to long
- Weight range
- 1/8–1/2 oz
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- Low
Live / natural bait suspension
Present a natural food form with enough life or scent to hold in a station without looking mechanical.
- keep it alive or fresh
- match the holding depth
- minimize hardware bulk
- detect without pulling it away
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- High
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Short to moderate
- Weight range
- As light as conditions allow
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- High
Tidal drift bait
Let a natural bait travel at the speed of the tide along an edge fish are feeding on.
- match weight to the run
- stay in the seam
- let it swing at the end
- reset up-tide
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- Moderate
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Short to moderate
- Weight range
- 1/8–1 oz
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- High
Surface retrieve
Work a floating bait across shade, weed edges, or low-light shallows.
- walk, pop, or crawl
- pause in holes
- keep it on top
- cover the edge
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- Surface
- Sensitivity
- Low
- Casting distance
- Moderate
- Weight range
- 1/4–3/4 oz
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Moderate
- Retie frequency
- Low
Stop-and-go
Imitate injured or hesitating prey by mixing travel with pauses that hold the bait in the strike zone.
- travel
- pause
- keep depth on the pause
- restart without jumping the band
What it asks of the tackle
- Depth control
- High
- Sensitivity
- High
- Casting distance
- Moderate
- Weight range
- 1/8–3/8 oz
- Cover resistance
- Moderate
- Line visibility
- Low
- Retie frequency
- Moderate
What moves them for this fish
Reviewed rules that push particular families up when the conditions match. Each one names the conditions it needs and why it exists, so you can disagree with it.
Telemetry found spotted seatrout over seagrass 98 percent of the time in daylight, moving at under a meter a minute, so daylight favors a bait held or worked slowly through the grass over a retrieve built to search open water for a fish that is not covering much ground.
When
Inshore · Grass flat · Bright or Mixed
Moves up
Live / natural bait suspension, Tidal drift bait, Horizontal retrieve
Reviewed 2026-08-30
The same telemetry has trout leaving seagrass for bare substrate at night while moving at nearly four times the daytime rate, so low light favors a moving search presentation over open bottom rather than a bait parked in one place.
When
Inshore · Sand hole, Channel edge · Night or Low light
Moves up
Horizontal retrieve, Stop-and-go, Live / natural bait suspension
Reviewed 2026-08-30
Where every sentence came from
Sources
Agency
SCDNR marine species account: spotted seatrout
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; identification; behaviour; forage; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
ASMFC, Cynoscion nebulosus Spotted Seatrout: Life History and Habitat Needs
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; behaviour; forage; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
TPWD, Spotted Seatrout in Texas
Used for identification; behaviour; forage; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-12.
Agency
TPWD news release, 23 February 2021, winter weather fish kills on the Texas coast
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
TPWD, Spotted Seatrout in Texas (Coastal Fisheries)
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
FWC spotted seatrout profile and recreational regulations (nine Florida management regions)
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Agency
FWC spotted seatrout species profile
Used for identification. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-12.
Agency
FWC spotted seatrout recreational regulations and species profile
Used for season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-13.
Peer reviewed
Anweiler, Arnott and Denson 2014, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 143:999-1010
Used for behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-12.
Peer reviewed
Moulton et al. 2017, Estuaries and Coasts 40:905-916
Used for behaviour; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-12-12.
Peer reviewed
Anweiler, Arnott and Denson 2014, low-temperature tolerance of juvenile spotted seatrout in South Carolina, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 143:999-1010
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Moulton et al. 2017, habitat partitioning and seasonal movement of red drum and spotted seatrout, Estuaries and Coasts 40:905-916
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Hall-Scharf, Switzer and Stallings 2016, ontogenetic and long-term diet shifts of a generalist juvenile predatory fish in an urban estuary, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 145:502-520
Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families. Read 2026-08-27, next check 2026-11-27.
Peer reviewed
Hall-Scharf, Switzer and Stallings 2016, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 145:502-520
Used for forage. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-26.
A source with no link predates the rule that one has to carry a URL. It is still a real citation and still checkable; it just takes a search rather than a click, and that is worth knowing before you rely on it.