This past weekend we worked hard to catch fish. We drove about 230 miles by land and about 12 miles by water looking for the very elusive speckled trout.

Elusive is actually the best word to describe the speckled trout. The schools can be thick enough in the water to walk across them but if they do not want to feed, fishing is totally useless.

When weather conditions, moon or tide tell one speckled trout to shut his mouth, word spreads quickly to the whole school and throughout the whole sound.

We headed down East last weekend to a place very near Swan Quarter where we caught some very large trout only last year.

The time of year was the same, the weather conditions were similar, and the fish symbol in the fisherman's almanac was optimum jet black.

With all these elements being picture perfect, there was one key element missing.

The speckled trout had not yet made it to these fishing grounds. We cast and cast for hours in a pure void.

Last year we used fresh cut pinfish as bait to catch some of the largest trout we have ever taken in the Pamlico Sound.

Finding these large trout was a chore but when we finally did, filling the cooler was easy.

Most of these fish weighed between 3 to 5 pounds, and the 48 quart cooler was quite impressive even to the Division of Marine Fisheries Patrol.

This past weekend we stopped on a point that always yields plenty of pinfish bait. The water temperature was near 70 degrees, and that is usually just perfect for the little bait stealers.

For some reason, it was difficult to catch enough bait to carry to the prime fishing grounds.

It took us almost an hour and a half to catch 15 pinfish to cut for bait. We took off for the trout hole around 9:30 a.m.

The wind was out of the northwest at a pretty good clip when we anchored and threw out the first baits. The wind was killing the tide by blowing the opposite way. Contrary to most fish species, we have found the speckles to love a northwest flow.

The wind direction did not bother us one bit, but the lack of fish did.

We fished in exactly the same place where we filled the cooler last year, with only the slight tug of a big blue crab on our baits.

We then used the direction of the wind to push us down a long grassy bank where we caught dozens of flounder last May.

There the conditions were again just perfect, gentle ripple on the surface, clear water, and sharp points a plenty but the fish were still absent.

We salvaged our day by finding a deep channel that held croakers and spots. They found our offerings of shrimp to be irresistible and we finally caught quite a few fish, but certainly not the targeted species.

Some days out on the big water are like this. I do not think we chose the wrong place to go.

I feel the fish must have fed heavily the day before or were going to feed just after we loaded up and headed for home.

There is no fisherman alive that has not heard another fisherman say, "you should have been here yesterday!" What I try to look forward to is being there tomorrow.