Pounding the Flounder

Summer fishing, among other things, means flounder. Whether catching them on hook and line or gigging them at night in shallow water, flounder can make an otherwise ho- hum summer fishing season interesting. We fished the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) this past week and found good numbers of flounder willing to eat mud minnows and plastic grubs.

Bait

Mud minnows are a favorite live bait, along with small finger mullet. Mud minnows are used more because they can be bought at the local bait shop. Finger mullet usually have to be caught with a cast net, and not all anglers are either adept at using a cast net or willing to go to that trouble.

Mud minnows made for most of our catch that day. We worked the mouths of all of the small feeder creeks that emptied into the ICW as the tide fell. There seemed to be at least one flounder in every creek. Some creeks held several flounder.

There are some rock jetties and bulkheads located up and down the ICW, and we found these areas to be holding fish as well.

Location

One really good place to find flounder in North Florida is the entrance to the Mayport Navy Base harbor. Since 9-11, it has not been fished much because of security measures that have been put in place. When the alert goes up a notch, the harbor entrance is heavily patrolled, and you will be sent packing if you even look like you are approaching.

This week, the security alert was low, and the normal patrol boats had a more relaxed attitude. I noticed several boats anchored very close to the mouth, so I ventured over to see if we could fish. Normally we would have been boarded and everything on our vessel would have been checked. On this day, the patrol boat sat off a slight distance and watched the people fishing.

I anchored the boat over a rocky edge that exists between the main river channel and the harbor channel. The current slows and swirls a bit here, and over the years prior to 9-11 I had caught some nice flounder here. The stop was worthwhile and we boated several legal flounder.

Websites

Interesting that we flounder fished this week. I came upon an unusual web site. This charter captain specializes in gigging flounder. Nightstalker Guide Service is a flounder-gigging guide. Captain Bob, “Red” Van operates and guides in the Rockport, Port Aransas area of Texas.

If you are interested in learning about gigging flounder, Cqptain Red's site offers great information, and of course if you are in his locale, you can take advantage of the guide service and experience it for yourself!

Flounder catching and gigging are fun; flounder eating is even better! Give it a try on your next trip!