Painting The Speckled Sea Trout (#3 Saltwater Series)

Speckled Sea Trout

  Here is another fish painting for those of you that love those toothy saltwater fish.  The Speckled Sea Trout is one of those shoreline fish that many a surf angler has hooked into.  Hook into these on a light tackle setup and you are in for a spell of fun fishing!

  For those of you that have never fished for or hooked into a speckled sea trout let me give you a little advice.  Bring a pair of fish pliers!!
  While fishing these fish for the first time a few years ago I was completely caught off guard by the massive fangs protruding from the upper lip of these trout.  I would even go so far as to say that these trout should be renamed the Vampire Trout.   As a primarily fresh water fly fisherman I did what I normally do to after a catch an attempted to remove the fly from one of these fish with my fingers.  Big mistake!  Vampire Trout... enough said.

 For those that follow my painting you know that this is the third installment of my series on saltwater fish and just like those that preceded it I kept the color line effects below the body of the fish.  Using this effect not only adds a dynamic element to the backdrop but also ties the colors of the painting together.  It also allows me to see how well the colors work together and when I move on to painting the fish, allows me to adjust the color palette on the fly.
  Because the colors of the sea trout vary depending on the type of water it inhabits I decided that instead of painting the silver ocean sea trout I would instead paint the more colorful inshore, sandy color Speckled Sea Trout.  Commonly found on the sandbars, grass flats, and brackish waters of the Florida Coast, this type of sea trout is a blast for fly angler.

Speckled Sea Trout

Red Drum (Red Fish)

Spanish Mackerel