Charlie Church: Every Month is a Good Month for Big Trout

Most anglers would be thrilled to catch a citation speckled trout – which, in Virginia, is over 24 inches. Charlie Church has 128 of them. He catches so many big specks that in the course of editing this interview, I had to revise that number upwards from 119 to 128. “I had a good fall,” he smiles.

““It’s always been a goal of mine to get a citation speck each month of the year.” ”

Charlie has forgotten more about specks than most of us will ever remember, but one of his practices that anglers could learn from is keeping meticulous notes of his catches, including the tides, temperature, moon phases, and other data points. Charlie was generous enough to share some of those insights and trends he’s seen over the year for catching trout.

He has been keeping notes for years on many different species from smallies to stripers, and you get the impression that he’s a pretty fishy dude who could pull something out of almost any body of water, but its speckled trout that he’s been become fixated on in recent years – and not just trout, but big trout.

I talked with Charlie on a recent fall day to learn more about why he loves speckled trout so much, why “a big speckled trout is 100% different than a small one,” and which weeks he saves vacation time for each year to fish.

Below are my questions in bold, followed by his answers.

Where are your home waters?

The lower and mid Chesapeake Bay.

I say this as the highest compliment, but it sounds like you’ve got a healthy obsession with speckled trout. Do you fish only trout or target other species too?

I like to target trophy trout year-round. Sometimes if the water gets too cold for a good trout bite, I'll swap and do some red drum.

Nice. Can you walk me through month by month? What does a year in the life of Charlie Church look like?

Actually, it’s always been a goal of mine to get a citation speck each month of the year. I'm close. I just need October, November, and December. (SIDE NOTE: Charlie did it - after this interview, he got a citation trout in the remaining months and hit his goal of one in every month. Congrats Charlie!).

Charlie with a cold season monster

I would have thought those are the easy months!

Yea, I was gonna say so!

So January it's all water temperature dependent. The fish are wintering in the lower bay and middle bay. You're looking for water that's not too cold. You're picking times that maybe the water warms up a bit, the weather's been stable, and then they get a small window of a good bite.

So this year [2023], the first two weeks of January were great because it wasn’t too cold. Those few weeks are usually really tough.

February is the same, if not a little bit harder, because they've been wintering for a while, they're not feeding as much, they're looking for good water temperatures. If it comes up to the fifties, that's great. That's when I’m targeting afternoons.

March can be great because the fish are getting ready to migrate, it’s starting to warm up. The water will get in the fifties for a couple of days, and it can be really good. I had days this year where it was fish non-stop, lots of big ones.

In April, I stayed on them and got a really big one early. They're starting to leave the rivers and head to spawning areas. That time can be weird because some are still in the rivers, some are moving. They're not as consolidated. It can be tougher, but if you hit it right, it can be good because they are feeding while migrating.

Quick tangential question – my understanding is that specks rarely migrate more than a few miles. Is that right?

I can answer that with data because I participate in the tagging program. Some of them go really far. Some will go from the upper bay, like in Maryland, to North Carolina. Some stay local. I’ve always thought there are various schools, like some are residents and they'll stay local, some are migratory and they'll move a long distance. So, there are two different schools is what I would stick with.

So, it's not necessarily like rockfish where you get your residents which are typically schoolies, and then when they get older, they migrate more? It sounds like you're saying there are just two different populations?

There's a study that confirmed each river system has resident fish and migratory fish. And I would say that's the case. Right now [October], a lot of fish people are catching are migratory ones cruising down the beach.

All right, cool. So then you're talking about April and targeting the migratory fish?

Yeah. And then May, they start ending up on their spawning flats. May can be good but they're still funneling in so it's not as many fish.

Catch and release a tagged trout

June, there is a lot of fish on the spawning flats but they are spawning, so… it can be good, it can be tough. Grass is also just all over the place.

July, they're spawning. I love July because they're starting to wrap up spawning and starting to want to eat again.

Is there a certain water temperature that you think activates the spawn?

I think it's moon phase. Like the first big moon in May, and they'll do it on each big moon until the end of July or August, depending on the fish.

When I think of the May full moon there's a lot going on. You've got the worm hatch, peeler run …

Yeah, worm hatch, crabs molting, striper moving out, cobia are starting to show up.

That month can be tough though because the thunderstorms are insane. And the winds are crazy. It's hit or miss, definitely a turbulent time of year.

July, they're wrapping up their spawn. They're starting to feed again pretty hard. It's really hot during the day. It's cold in the morning and at night. So it kind of narrows the bite window.

August, pretty much the same as July. They're feeding, getting ready to move.

September, it gets good again. But you have the same problem in April where they’re spread out.

October is pretty much the same deal. They're moving, they're spread out. They're feeding though. So, if you find them you're gonna catch them.

November, they start landing in the winter spots. It can be good. You hit them when they show up. They just swam a long way if they are migrating, so they are feeding pretty good. And then the specks get a really hard feed before they go into lowering how much they're eating.

I love it. If you had to pick one or two weeks of the year to save up all your vacation time for, which ones would they be?

So I do that every year - I’m lucky my wife is so supportive of it!

I mix it up every year because I keep getting it wrong! A couple of years I was like, oooh I'll do October and it was good but then I'd catch them November and then, alright I'm gonna take some time off in November. Last year I did the first two weeks of December and it was epic.

My guess would have been late May, early June, or October sometime.

May and June, I can get out at sunrise – the sun comes up so early that I can get out and get back home in like an hour or two.

And then in July and August, I love it. Once the bite really extends to midday, that's when I want to be taking PTO.

A hungry trout

In December, sunrise can be good and nights can be great. I'm more comfortable fishing during the day, and the fishing is pretty good.

But, if you're just a typical weekend warrior, if you wanted to catch a lot of fish or you wanted to catch big fish, what would be the best times?

For a lot? I would do October. October, they're feeding, and [you can] find a good school.

For big fish, I would do either June or end of November, early December.

June, they're all piled up and getting ready to spawn. In December they're piled up and having to eat a lot more.

Ok, great. It sounds like you keep pretty meticulous notes and statistics.

I do. I have a log book. I started it when I lived in Northern Virginia because I was floating the Shenandoah River and Potomac for smallmouth, and I was curious, like, at what water level things would happen. Is it gonna be a little higher? Does it fish better?

That transitioned to me logging every trip. Then I log every citation I get as well. And it's cool because you start seeing patterns.

Sounds we’re of like minds because I do the same thing. Also, smallmouth fishing in the Shenandoah may be my favorite type of fishing right now.

It’s kinda like speckled trout fishing. A big, smallmouth is almost like a different fish compared to a small, smallmouth. A big speckled trout is 100% different than a small one.

Can you expand on that point a little bit and what you mean by that?

Sure. So, a big speckled trout – they're tough to get the bite. Sometimes you get lucky and you get them but you have to put thought into it. If you pattern them – time the tide, hit the conditions right – it does work out and you can get more of them.

The fight is different. Their mouth gets big, kind of like a largemouth bass. They thrash on the surface a lot. Sometimes they run, sometimes they run at you.  They hit topwaters really aggressively like a smallmouth. They even look different when they're bigger. I’ve fallen in love with them!

I love the fight, I love the mental challenge behind it, and I love how rewarding it is when you get a big one.

I do like drum, but they're only shallow a couple of months out of the year and there's so many of them. I’ve got a lot of huge drum where it's just like you close your eyes and throw it in and get one. But trout, to find a school of big feeding speckled trout is special. It doesn’t happen a lot.

Obviously Chesapeake trout can be world class, but a lot of people in South Carolina or Texas might challenge you on that. Can you talk a little bit about what makes our fishery different? Is it better or worse in certain aspects?

I think ours can be better and it can be worse. Our trout have to survive potentially really harsh winters and they can all get killed off in a freeze, and it does happen. But they grow bigger faster. And they get huge in Virginia. The state record in Virginia is over 16 pounds. That’s the second biggest speckled trout in the world.

And that record stood for 20 years.

The state record is gonna stand for a lot longer!

And North Carolina is seeing it now where they have a really good class of the same genetics and broke their state record. They'll break it again next year for sure. So it can be great but it can also be very tough. Versus Texas, it's more consistent.

I'm mindful that I never want people to like burn spots but talking in generalities, what's an ideal Chesapeake trout fishing habitat look like in terms of temperature, salinity, food sources, cover, all of that?

You're looking for rivers that can have the water get warm, so mud, mud in the back will warm it up. And it's gotta be near in deep water. That will cause baitfish, gizzard shad, mullet to come in.

In the summer you're looking for grass – they spawn in grass. And oysters are great. [But] I want more grass. So probably a spawning habitat would be grass, shallow water, hard sand, good salinity, forage nearby, whether it's menhaden, bunker, mullet, shrimp. You want not a lot of pressure, because they do react to it negatively.

There's a lot to work with there. And then how far north do you feel like they go in the Chesapeake?

I think they go pretty far up. Maryland gets some huge ones. Tangier Sound’s a very well-known trout area [and] they definitely go farther than that. A really good trout area doesn't mean that's the northern limit. I'm sure they go way further up. I've heard of some huge ones caught in Maryland in the winter too.

Do you think there's some validity to the argument that our fish are bigger being on the northern end of their range?

I do. For us to get those huge fish, we need multiple winters in our area that our mild. This time up, if we have another warm winter, it's gonna be epic next year [2024]. Because we've had a few warm ones. It allows the fish to get huge – fingers crossed. But if we have a freeze like in 2018, that would really hurt us.

I mean, they're surviving in the Chesapeake Bay, big water. They can get huge. And Texas fish get huge too. I would love to fish in Texas and get some of those fish but they haven't had a 16 pounder caught there.