Jighead and finger mullet--hook bait through both lips.
There’s a tendency to fish too quickly for flounder, and that’s a huge mistake, especially when flippin’ a spot. Flounder are ambush predators and it sometimes takes several presentations to get a lure in just the right spot. In fact, flounder are such homebodies that I’ve flipped a spot, hooked a fish and lost it, re-rigged, flipped back to the same spot and caught the same fish that still had my first jig in its mouth. And this isn’t unusual, even with good fish in the 3- to 6-pound range. Like I said, flounder are not bonefish!
Where practical, wading is a great way to flip for flounder. I’ve had great results wading around docks and pilings in large estuaries and tidal rivers, and on shallow sandbars where there are points and turns along a dropoff. Flounder hold well along slight dropoffs of only a foot or so, which waders can easily “feel” with their feet. When current pushes across a bar, flounder wait on the downcurrent side, ambushing bait washed over the sand. Flipping along such dropoffs is highly effective, and often results in fish hitting lures almost under your bunions.
Shrimp are a great alternative.
Here’s a trick for getting flounder out of piling or rock jungles: If you get a hit from a fish in a bad spot, you often can “guide” it into more open water before slamming the hook home and fighting the flattie to the boat. That can’t be done with most fish, including seatrout. But with a little experience and rod-working know-how, you can be surprisingly successful on flounder. First time I saw this work was with angler Greg Fields while fishing a rock jetty. He flipped to a hole behind a huge boulder where the water was slick. If a fish hit his flipped jig there, the battle would end in a sure cutoff—or so I thought. He made a perfect flip, hopped the lure-and-bait combination a time or two, then announced he had a strike. I expected him to set the hook and horse the fish out of the rocks. But he gently “slow-reeled” the flounder through a one-foot gap between the jagged boulders, right up under the boat. He smiled at me, wound his rodtip close to the water, and set the hook hard. The rod bowed as the fish tried to get back into the rocks, but Greg muscled it up, and shortly netted a 6-pound flattie.
“A flounder won’t hardly let go of a bait, even a plastic-tail grub body once he gets it in his mouth,” he explained. “You can lead them around a pretty good bit and they’ll just hang on. Sometimes if they let go, you can just drop a lure or bait and a fish will come right back. You can get a lot of flounder out of places that look just impossible to pull fish from—if you’re careful and ‘lead’ them where you want to fight ’em.”
This would not be possible on a fish that grabs your bait a greater distance from the boat after a conventional cast.
Skilled flounder flippers work lures or baits right around a boat, because they’re close to good flounder structures like pilings, bulkheads, jetties and shallow-water oil and gas platforms (in places like Louisiana and Mobile Bay, Alabama). These places are full of barnacles and it’s easy to get cut off. But with short flips, debris-ridden flounder spots can be worked easily, quickly, without constantly losing baits and lures. Flippers spend a lot more time fishing than re-rigging lures and baits lost to snags, and they catch a lot more flounder than anglers fearful of probing fish-holding lairs.
Angler successfully steers on from the pilings.
Another tip for flounder flippin’ is to keep a bait moving through the water. This helps locate rocks and pilings along bottom, plus presents the bait in a natural way for flounder to ambush it. Flounder don’t cruise around in search of food. They lie on (or in) the bottom. So it’s important to keep a lure or bait moving.
You can have the greatest aim in the world, but you won’t catch squat unless you know a fishing area well. Proper boat positioning is needed, so that short, accurate flips get the bait to specific spots. High-definition fishfinders are helpful in locating choice flounder spots. But “feeling” bottom formations and cover with lures and baits is most telling. This takes time, and it can be a bit costly in lost lures and baits, but it’s worth it. When fishing a jig or bait with a heavy sinker slowly along bottom, you can feel every rock, sunken piling and ledge lip that might hold a flounder.
