If YOUR talking about a spotted sea trout, aka speckled trout, and red drum, aka red fish, then yes, you guys are talking about the same fish.

Speckled trout can not live in fresh water. Reds can.

Speckled trout (spotted sea trout) is a "drum"...that's a new one to me

Learn something(s) new everyday

Very interesting.

Same family, just like sandies & croaker.

Years ago the TPWD had a cross between the speckled trout and yellow mouth corvina that they stocked in the power plant lakes south of San Antonio.

Yep that is what I was talking about. I personally have never taken a spec and thrown it in fresh water to see if it will live, but if a speck cross can survive and reds and several others can I would be inclined to believe it is possible.

He's a really dark fish too. Only trout I've seen with that many spots and that dark are caught in or close to the gulf, as opposed to ones that are caught in the bay.

Really neat find

Speckled trout, redfish, and flounder can live and grow just fine in freshwater. Several places in Texas have freshwater fisheries for these 3 species.

However, they have to be slowly acclimated to totally fresh water. You can't just take a fish from the salt and dump em into freshwater. It has be gradual.

They can grow just fine - and large - in freshwater. But they will never reproduce.

Juvenile/fry/eggs won't live in freshwater, has to be at least fingerlings.

Freshwater reds/trout, IMHO, taste terrible compared to those caught in the salt.

Lots and lots of cases where floods/storms pushed fish far inland and trapped in freshwater. Tarpon too!! The gradual salinity change back to fresh and they survive just fine.

The reason you see more reds than trout in ponds is that reds are more tolerant to cold water. Unless the pond is very deep, trout have a tendency not to survive to cold, but the lack of salt is just fine.

In fact, it is very common in the winter for trout and reds to enter freshwater rivers and travel far above the salt line to escape the cold. They have caught reds and trout just below the Lake Livinston dam in the winter. You can often see blue crabs there too (and that's a long way to WALK). Heck, they even have a real nice big flounder mounted at one of the bait camps that was caught below the dam.

gonna have to call bull chit on that one, I would have to see proof. I used to fish lake Livingston and NEVER heard of a red or a trout being caught below the dam, just big catfish


reds can live pretty far upriver into the mouths of the bays but trout cannot.

in Louisianana up rivers they catch bass and reds in the same areas but the trout are always closer to the salt.


one thing that puzzles me is that the trout in the OP's pic is about 10" long. ike was in 2010 I believe so if that fish was displaced it wouldn't take it 4 years to grow to 10"


I did look up and see that a 7lb flounder was caught by a catfisherman drifting dead bait on bottom below the dam, which is 118 miles from the bay.

I know the cold issue is usually why they only get big in power plant lakes... id love to stock a pond full of reds..

that would be cool!

I use to live in the Florida panhandle area and fished bass tournaments all the time, in the winter you would see guys trolling grubs and other jigs behind their boat up and down the creeks and rivers catching specks. I've caught bass, flounder, specs, and reds all on the same lure within 50 ft of each other. In fact it's pretty common to see specs chase your lures back to the boat.