Trophy specs, a.k,a. crappie, are abundant in Lake Santa Fe.

Mention speckled perch in the Gainesville area and Lake Lochloosa is currently the first lake that comes to mind. Thanks to a massive stocking project, that lake is producing a lot of fish, and some of them are reaching respectable size. Rodman Pool will also get a few votes, and those who stay very current will note that Orange and Newnans lakes are coming back.

Lake Santa Fe seldom makes the list. But, if an incident that happened to me in March is any indication, it should.

It was a warm afternoon, and specks were the last thing on my mind as I worked a gold minnow plug over submerged grass in six feet of water along the northeast corner of the lake. Bass were moving in to spawn, I wanted to get out of the office, and Santa Fe is the closest lake to my house. It seemed like a plan, and I’d already corralled a few small bass when my plug suddenly “got heavy.” As far as strikes go it wasn’t much, and when I got the fish to the surface I could see why. It was a speck—but what a speck!

Having spent a fair amount of time chasing specks on Santa Fe over the years I had already discovered that 13- to 15-inch fish were more common than uncommon, and I’d even tallied a few in the 16- to 17-inch range. This one, however, was well out of that class. It measured a bit over 19 inches on my Florida Sportsman Law Stick, and was butterball fat.

Slipping out on a glassy day on a speck search mission.

It was by far the largest speck I’d ever caught, and bigger than any of the bass I caught that day. Unfortunately, I’d left my scale at the house and couldn’t get a weight, and not wanting to keep any fish on an impromptu afternoon trip I eased it back into the lake and watched it swim off in fine shape. Besides, that fish was likely spawning in that shallow area and I really didn’t want to pull those genes out of the pool anyway.

I didn’t give the fish much thought (other than “Wow, that was a big speck!”) until I was talking to Gary Simpson at the Tackle Box in Gainesville, a few months later. He asked me how much it weighed and when I told him I had no idea, he sadly informed me that I may have committed a major piscatorial boo-boo. According to Simpson (who is pretty sharp on this stuff) the current Florida state record speck is 3.83 pounds from Lake Talquin in 1992. And, a 19-inch-plus speck in prime spawning condition might—not for certain, but maybe— equal or beat it. In short, Gainesville’s resident piscatorial authority informed me that I might have tossed a contender for a new state record over the side.

I’ve had my share of Homer Simpson “Doh!” moments, but the thought that a new state record might be swimming in Santa Fe surprised the heck out of me. When I discussed the possibility with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologist Jerry Krummrich, however, it didn’t surprise him.

Trevor, left, and Daniel Schultz rake in some speck-ta-cular rewards.

“Santa Fe isn’t as fertile as some of the other lakes in the area and wouldn’t carry the poundage of fish per acre that an Orange or Lochloosa would, but it has all the right ingredients to produce big specks,” he explained. “This lake is unusual in that it doesn’t have gizzard shad. It’s a threadfin shad-only-system. That is an ideal year-round forage base for specks. You also have significantly deeper water. A lot of the lake is over 15 feet deep and there are a lot of 20- to 25-foot depths. The forage and the water depth create an excellent speck habitat that was still great throughout the recent drought. Specks may have struggled on other lakes, but they had an very stable environment here.”

“A good environment is one thing,” he continued, “but a major key in producing big specks is time for the fish to utilize that habitat and grow. It takes about three years for a speck to reach 10 inches. One of 19-inch size is likely to be in the five- to six-year-old class. On a heavily fished lake not many survive that long. You won’t have a 15-inch speck if it goes into the skillet at 12 inches. Fishing pressure plays a role and Santa Fe has had very light angling pressure for specks during the last three or four years. A 19-inch speck is a monster speck. But, when you combine the habitat, forage and lack of pressure, it doesn’t surprise me that specks of that size are there.”