Flounder Are Worth The Effort

By FRANK SARGEANT The Tampa Tribune

Published: Apr 20, 2008

Last week's mention of a 10-pound flounder caught in the Little Manatee River by captain Billy Nobles brought numerous e-mail queries on where and how to catch flounder in our area. The good news is that it can be done, but the bad news is this is not a great place to catch the flat fish.

Flounder do best in water that is a bit murky, and the clear water throughout our area are not prime. Along the east coast, roughly from Sebastian Inlet northward, they get a huge winter run of flounder weighing 5 pounds or more, fish that live in the muddy rivers of south Georgia and the Carolinas in summer, but we don't get that bonus here.

The average flounder in our area is a bit more than the legal 12-inch minimum. That's plenty big enough to grace a dinner plate, however, and the tasty critters are almost all meat; the organs occupy only a small pocket on one side.

Flounder behave a lot like stingrays. They spend much of their time buried in the sand or mud on the bottom, lunging out to grab shrimp and minnows that pass too close. So the places to look for them are not on the thick grass where trout, snook and reds abound, but rather along the sandy edges of the flats, the larger potholes, sloughs and runouts, and the shoulders of large passes and channels.

Flounder eat about anything that will fit into their toothy mouths, but one of the best possible baits is the banded killifish or "mud minnow," which is found around muddy oyster bars and mangrove shorelines in our area. These baitfish can be caught in minnow traps or in small-mesh nets. Average size is 2 to 3 inches.

These tough little baits will live for days in a bait well, and for hours on a small hook. The best presentation is usually to lip hook them on a quarter-ounce jig head. The bait is then cast to sandy edges and bounced down channel edges. When a flounder sees it, the bite is solid and instant.

If you can't find killifish, a piece of fresh-cut shrimp works pretty well, too, but you'll have to replace it frequently because of pinfish bites.

Another tactic, practiced mostly by Panhandle flounder experts, is to tow a small gold spoon along the edges of oyster bars, just fast enough to make the lure wobble. Flounder will run the lure down, and a bonus is that you often get some nice redfish with the same lure.

Plastic shrimp like the DOA and Old Bayside also do well. They are fished like live shrimp, drifted with the current just off bottom or crawled slowly along bottom.

The late Ray DeMarco of Bradenton Beach was good at catching large flounder, and he found them most often around reefs and rockpiles a mile or two off the beach. He said these fish, weighing 6 to 8 pounds, could be found on the sand just off the cover and sometimes right on top of it, and they took live sardines fished with just enough weight to sink them to bottom.

Once you've caught your bag of flounder - the limit is 10 per day - you're faced with another problem, which is how to clean a fish shaped pretty much like a Frisbee.

The trick is to use a very sharp, flexible fillet knife, and work the fillets off the top of the fish first. There is one on each side of the lateral line. Then, flip the fish over, revealing the flat, white belly. This side looks like it would not be worth cleaning, but if you slip the knife in along the centerline and carefully slide it to the backbone, then ease the knife, flat with the cleaning table, out toward the perimeter of the fish, you'll trim out a couple more thin but tasty fillets.

The meat you've got is boneless and absolutely delicious in any recipe you'd care to try. The best method is simply to broil it with a bit of butter and add a squeeze of lemon at serving - outstanding, and well worth the search for a fish that's tough to catch.

HERE AND THERE: The Gold Triangle Fishing Club hosts a seminar on choosing and using marine electronics Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Bill Currie Ford on North Dale Mabry in Tampa; new members are welcome; (813) 935-3293. … Captain Bill Miller's new book, "Fish Smart - Catch More" is now available online at www.billmiller.com. The book includes 107 tips on fishing around the Bay area, most related to saltwater species, and includes detailed instruction on rigging and tactics, boat handling and maintenance, conservation and more. Miller, formerly a noted fishing guide and tournament angler, is the host of "Hooked on Fishing," which airs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays on Catch 47.