[Catch]

While I believe that habitat deteoriation - especially loss of oyster reefs - is a culprit, I also think there's a hydrological reason as well.

I live near the headwaters of the Calcasieu River. Over the last 3 years, we've had 5 rain events where we had 6+ inches of rain in 48 hours. Guess where all that water went?

Back in January we had one of those events. It rained nearly 7 inches while the temperature barely got above 40 degrees. That's a lot of extremely cold water that speckled trout cannot tolerate.

My guess is that these repeated rain events - especially this past winter - drive the bigger trout back into the Gulf. Where they are more susceptible to predation. Those that survive are slow to return back into the lake. Several iterations of this is not good.