Photo by TOM EVANS

Since moving to Buras back in 1968, I’ve fished for specks around a lot of the Gulf’s nearshore petroleum structures. I’m quite proud to declare that my fishing partners and I have caught our share over the years.

On one particular trip, a steady stream of eye-opening specks began filling up my cooler within five minutes of our tying off to a bit on the protective cribbing of the first well that we prospected. By the time we hollered “Uncle!” that cooler, which was a 120-quart model intended to hold cobia, was so full that it took two of us to lift it -- and we were still a few fish short of our limits!

But we’d had enough fun and games (and fillets) for the day and headed in anyway. The squall that had held us up from fishing for cobia had dissipated, and the far-off Gulf was beckoning, but it didn’t matter a whit by then -- because there wasn’t anywhere left in the boat to put a decent-sized cobia!

I appreciate stumbling into an opportunity like that now and then -- but then, to crib radio great Paul Harvey’s immortal phrase, there’s “the rest of the story.” You see, at any time from, say, late April into October, offshore oil-field structures offer great potential for specks. And that applies all across the Louisiana coast.

At this point I feel it relevant to qualify “offshore” as being actually “nearshore” -- which, for the purposes of this article, would best be defined as from the surf out to depths of 25 to 30 feet or so. Since the surf is worthy of an article of its own, we won’t address it here; our coverage will begin at the end of a long cast from the beach -- somewhere just outside of the first breakers.

During summer’s low tides, the troughs nearer shore are too shallow to be suitable for specks, so schools of them will search for prey up and down the beach just seaward of the breakers at the last (second or third) bar. A often as not you’ll just run randomly into these fish, but their presence can also be unmistakably signaled by the squawk of diving gulls or the appearance of small, fresh and rather pungent slicks. In any event, a little time spent idling along such a stretch of beach may prove very worthwhile.

But when specks are involved, I do as much of my prospecting as is possible with (in this case) a jig; in this sort of setting I’ll usually troll a pair of them. The tactic has been quite effective for locating fish that were for all practical purposes invisible, and I highly recommend it. Just toss ‘em behind the boat a good ways and drag ‘em along; on getting a strike, make a circle and another pass through the area in which it occurred. If you pick up another fish, shift into casting mode, running under trolling-motor power. These fish will usually be on the move, but if you’re quick enough, you can catch several from such a school.