Fishing mythbuster: Croakers love scrambled speckled-trout eggs for breakfast

Croaker speckled trout
Capt. Brandon Carter caught this lunker speckled trout on a live croaker this week in Venice. The trout ate the baitfish because it was hungry, not because it caught it eating its eggs. (Capt. Brandon Carter)
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on May 22, 2013 at 2:53 PM, updated May 22, 2013 at 3:01 PM

MYTH: Speckled trout hate croakers because croakers eat trout eggs.

This is arguably the most widely-held fallacy in coastal-Louisiana fishing. Croakers move to the coast in the warm-weather months, which is the exact time when speckled trout spawn. Also, anglers begin to use croakers as bait during this time, and when a trout hits a croaker on the end of an angler's line, it's not a dainty process. Speckled trout smash the living hell out of croakers to kill them, and then come back for the belly-filling feast.

Based on the ferocity of the attack, it's not unreasonable to think that speckled trout must really hate to breathe the same water as croakers, and that folk tale has passed down from generation to generation of anglers.

"That one's a lot of fun, and I have people tell it to me with the straightest faces," said fisheries biologist and freelance outdoor writer Jerald Horst. "They usually have the same straight face that they wear when they're describing the nest that trout make to spawn in.

"People say it with such belief and conviction that sometimes I don't even correct them anymore because it would hurt their feelings."

But actually, Horst said, specks don't hate croakers; they just think they're delicious.

"A speckled trout wouldn't know what eats its eggs," he said. "As science has pretty well illustrated, trout spawn from May through September on a falling tide between dusk and midnight. As soon as the eggs are fertilized, they're buoyant."

That doesn't leave a whole lot of opportunity for interaction between croakers and the eggs.

"Croakers live on the bottom, and within two seconds of spawning the eggs on these vigorous outgoing tides, the eggs are swept far away from the female in the darkness," Horst said. "Now, even if a croaker were to rise from the depths of Barataria Pass, swim up 60 feet to eat a trout's eggs, how would she possibly see it? Even if she could, how would she tell her eggs from those of the other 2,000 or 5,000 females that are also spawning there that night?"

A trout's brain isn't that highly developed, Horst said. After a female expels her eggs, she swims off to recover from the rigors of the spawn without any regard for her offspring.

"Do we think that a trout exhibits love for its progeny?" Horst wondered. "They willingly and enthusiastically cannibalize them once they start spawning."