‘A pretty unique little fish’: Spotted seatrout found in Murrells Inlet took unusual path
It’s common knowledge that spotted seatrout traverse the South Carolina-North Carolina state line in the Little River vicinity, moving, migrating if you will, from the Palmetto State to the Tar Heel State and vice-versa.
But this instance of a spotted seatrout traveling from North Carolina to South Carolina is a little extreme.
Rob Birchmeier of Pawleys Island is an avid kayak angler who fishes numerous areas from Mt. Pleasant to Murrells Inlet. This fall and winter, Birchmeier, like so many other anglers in the Carolinas, has enjoyed a prolific spotted seatrout bite.
On the day after Christmas, Dec. 26, 2019, Birchmeier was working the Oaks Creek area of the inlet when he landed a trout with a tag implanted in the belly.
Birchmeier gleaned the information from the tag, noting it was tagged in North Carolina, and released the fish.
About a week ago, Birchmeier heard back from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries tagging program, and learned some very interesting info about the travels of the tagged trout.
The trout was tagged on July 30, 2019 at Juniper Bay, located northwest of Ocracoke, N.C., across Pamlico Sound. The fish traveled approximately 196 miles southward to Murrells Inlet in the 149 days before it was recaptured by Birchmeier.
The trout also grew nearly 4 inches in the 149-day stretch, from 15 inches to 18.8 inches.
“It puts into perspective that this is a coast-wide fish,” said Birchmeier. “I knew this was a North Carolina fish, but I thought it would be from southern North Carolina. I didn’t think they would come that far.”
Tracey Bauer, a marine fisheries biologist with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, works with spotted seatrout and weakfish, and is heavily involved in the spotted seatrout tagging program.
Earlier this week, Bauer shed some light on the travels of spotted seatrout that have been tagged in North Carolina as part of the tagging program.
“That’s a pretty unique little fish he caught there, for how far it traveled and that it was caught in South Carolina like that,” said Bauer. “We’ve had 530 fish recaptured since the program started in 2014, and only five have been recaptured in South Carolina. That fish is the only one (of those five) that wasn’t originally tagged outside the Wilmington (N.C.) area.”
Only five fish tagged since the inception of the program have traveled more than the 196 miles Birchmeier’s trout traveled.
“It’s very uncommon for them to be traveling that far, at least that’s what our data shows,” said Bauer.
The longest distance a tagged trout in the program has traveled is 271 miles, from the Brunswick River near Wilmington to Chesapeake Bay. Bauer said the average distance traveled by the tagged trout that have been recaptured is 29 miles.
Bauer pointed out that trout found in North Carolina and Virginia are genetically the same, and have different genetics from those found in South Carolina waters.
Bauer has noted the same excellent trout fishing this fall and winter in North Carolina, just two years after a severe freeze put the species in jeopardy. In 2018, the trout fishery in North Carolina was closed from the beginning of January to June 15.
Since then, there has been little harsh winter weather in the coastal Carolinas.
“The fishing the entire last year has been just phenomenal for trout,” said Bauer. “I think the weather could be part of it. You have natural mortality and fishing mortality, and natural makes up most of the mortality.
“If they’re not experiencing that natural mortality (that helps). It could also be that we’ve had a couple of good year classes. In North Carolina we have a fishery juvenile abundance index, to get a pulse on how trout are doing. In 2018 it was a little above average. The whole purpose of closing (the trout fishery) was to allow the fish that did survive the freeze to be able to spawn. Trout are great at recovering because they mature at one year.”