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Summer Flounder, Fluke, = Flat.

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DoorGunner

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7 hours ago, DoorGunner said:

It may be the middle of winter but the food pump is in place and ready to turn the back bays into the nursery nature intended it to be. Our dock is in a unique area not far from the inter-coastal waterway. What is neat about the area is it's a narrow section of water that has two openings to the main channel. When the tide moves it's very slow because the water moves in and out at both ends. It's like a tub where the water rises and falls but just not much of a current. This time of the year many minnows and many many more grass shrimp move in and around our docks. I believe because they are cold blooded and lethargic during the cold winter that they seek out areas with less current to save energy or from being swept away in strong currents. Right now the grass shrimp are just hanging around waiting for spring just like us. When the water begins to warm in early April the shrimp will mate and the female will carry hundreds of eggs on her underside where most will hatch usually during a moon tide and there will be millions possibly billions each dropping hundreds of eggs that will hatch providing every little fish born in the back plenty of food. Make no mistake about it,grass shrimp are the food that feeds the back bays. they are the food pump. 

I have my drop net that is always in the water and it's amazing how many shrimp will be in it any time I pull it up in the winter. As long as I see this I know that the system back here is in a decent healthy place. Now combine all these shrimp and all the crabs that will come out of hibernation plus the shiners (spearing) that will also spawn around the end of May and we can understand why so many fish rush into the back bays to chow down. Here is a shot of a female and male grass shrimp. Notice the eggs clustered under her body. The darker the eggs become the closer they are to hatching. When it's time the female will begin to swim around bending her body tail towards head then snap back straight. She is in her shed mode and eventually her old outer shell will split and she will pop out and swim away and at the same time the eggs will release and as they slowly settle towards the bottom they suddenly hatch revealing hundreds of miniature shrimp about the size of a pinhead. Incredible sight to see and I've been lucky enough to see it twice. 

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Here is a shot of the drop net in the middle of winter with no bait. It just sits on the bottom and they swim in and feed on any growth or plankton that is on the net. By the way the net is sitting on the snow after I pulled it in.

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The links in the food chain seem to be in good shape and that can only mean that if the usual spring runs of predators arrive then they will flood into the back bays as expected because fish like any animal will always head towards the food and no other acre of land can produce as much food as one acre of wetlands. Just imagine that as we sit home watching football and keeping warm, nature is prepping the back bays for another summer of fun. 

This is so cool.. I love your post man. Keep them coming!!!!

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DG, your threads are like fluke documentaries. If I catch more this year,  they're going to be a big reason why. Thank you for taking the time!

Edited by Ash
just because you can doesn't mean you should
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On 1/11/2018 at 11:12 AM, MarkG said:

360˚[full circle] would mean they could see underneath themselves...?

You are still describing 180˚, understand? it's a semi circle. I'm not questioning the sneaking up behind part, etc.. I believe that to be true.:p

 

Wrong plane.  You are thinking spherical.  Ignore the sand below it, and think head on a swivel.  

 

360 deg is correct.  

.

 

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Live minnows. Always been my most favorite bait ever. Took two years of catching them commercially to understand that they just aren't a normal part of a summer flounders diet. First thing I found out is that bluefish could take lessons from minnows on nasty. They are the most vicious fish I have ever seen in the wild. The only thing they lack from becoming a super predator is size but they make up for it in numbers. They have that big wide head and if you ever get a chance to open the mouth of a large minnow you will see a full set of the nastiest teeth nature ever gave any fish. Here is what four gallons of minnows can do to a partially frozen one pound bunker in just fifteen minutes.

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Minnows aren't a part of a summer flounders diet because the two just don't cross paths very often if ever. Minnows rule their little domain that includes all those countless miles of very narrow shallow tidal creeks and along the edge of sod banks and bulkheads. Their secret to their success is to stay in water deep enough so the gulls and terns can't get to them and shallow enough so predators like the flounder can't get under them. You won't find them in open water or out in the open where flounder can get to them. Never really thought about it that much over the years until I learned about the minnows by trapping them. then I realized that of all the flounder I have cleaned I never found a minnow in their stomach unless it was the one on my hook. One trip I did find a minnow when I had only been using herring fillets but when I looked closer I could see that even this minnow had been on another fishermans hook because I could see where the minnow had been ripped off  the hook and it's lips had been split. We see the water depth tactic right at our dock. I'll have my drop net down along with at least one minnow pot each baited with bunker. On either tide when the water over them is about a foot deep I will catch many good size minnows but only for about twenty minutes. Then the water deepens or shallows depending on the tide and they are gone even though there is a perfect food source right in front of them. If the tide is rising then they will move on under our dock staying in the safe depth. If it's falling they will move farther out staying in their safe zone. 

Many fishermen come in complaining that they were getting many bites but not able to hook many flounder. When they say that they had many bites where they reeled in to only find half a minnow left on their hook. I tell them they probably had the chance of a good catch of crabs but not flounder. The dental work on a flounder is awesome with teeth larger and even sharper than a bluefish but they don't mesh. About the only critters in our back bays capable of cutting a minnow in half are blueclaw crabs and bluefish. Everything else swallows their food whole like stripers, weakies and summer flounder. Their teeth are designed for one thing only. For grabbing a target and holding on. If you feel like you are missing flounder then look for the right signs. Sometimes flounder just gulp it down while other times they seem to like to just hold on to it for a minute and thats when many of us miss them. We set the hook and come up empty. When this happens while using minnows look at the minnow closely. You will see lines of scales missing from the sides of the minnow as we yanked it out of the flounders mouth the ragged teeth just removed the scales. Then look under the neck of the minnow. Almost 100% of the time you will find the skin pulled back right behind the throat of the minnow. classic sign of a missed flounder. 

A little tip to help when flounder fishing and they just don't seem to want to take the hook. Sometimes fish want small. Have no idea why but when my large baits aren't working or just seem to have flounder hanging on I go to smaller baits and my hookup ratio increases greatly. That's why I always carry a very sharp scissors so I can trim strp baits to fit their mood. Also I trim my bucktails to reveal more of the bait. Bucktails look great in the package with long hairs trailing well past the hook but I always wondered why cover up the bait that is the main reason they are going to attack. Si I trim the hairs off so they end about 1/4 inch past the end of the hook. Still get the fluff and flash of the hair but it isn't long enough to cover the bait. One more thing I learned from bucktailing is that by constantly jigging it up and down you are putting stress on whatever bait you tipped it with especially minnows. Look closely after a few minutes of jigging and you will notice that the hook hole in the minnows mouth has grown in diameter and thats a problem because when a flounder strikes it's likely to actually bounce the minnow right off the hook because the hole is now large enough so the barb doesn't catch. Easy solution is soft plastic baits that I cut into small pieces. Place the minnow or strip bait on the hook then slide a piece of the plastic bait right over the hook. Now you have a stopper that won't allow your bait to be bounced off the bucktail no matter how large the hole becomes. 

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Bucktail with stopper and hairs trimmed. 

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No way this minnow can bounce off.

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I use soft plastic but have been thinking about trying one of the many scented baits. Not Gulp unless it's small like the size I cut the plastics into but I want to check out the freshwater scented baits for panfish that usually come in a small jar. fish are fish so I'm not worried about what scent as long as it has an aroma that could up the game a little. And seriously, the trimming of the hairs and the plastic stopper has worked well for me over the years. Still feels funny to take a new bucktail out of the package and put the scissors to it right away but it has always paid off. 

 

 

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Going through my photos and found these two from our aquarium. What I was talking about earlier when flounder are hunkered down and not feeding. Not the best pics but you can still make out the flounder laying flat on the bottom after it had shook it's fins and tossed gravel over itself.

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Here is the same flounder when it is ready to strike. Notice how the body is coiled and the long fin is holding the body off the bottom for a lightening fast strike on the grass shrimp directly in front of it. The cammo is so good that the shrimp doesn't have a clue. 

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Live minnows. Always been my most favorite bait ever. Took two years of catching them commercially to understand that they just aren't a normal part of a summer flounders diet. First thing I found out is that bluefish could take lessons from minnows on nasty. They are the most vicious fish I have ever seen in the wild. The only thing they lack from becoming a super predator is size but they make up for it in numbers. They have that big wide head and if you ever get a chance to open the mouth of a large minnow you will see a full set of the nastiest teeth nature ever gave any fish. Here is what four gallons of minnows can do to a partially frozen one pound bunker in just fifteen minutes.

005_zpshlm3lmox.jpg.09a81e0fc556e311ef7cd3be4ac0bca5.jpg

DSCN0456.jpg.69120b4d7e3ddcaecdf404046b9aa238.jpg

DSCN0609.jpg.428cffe83a15d9f036108ba2a6d7df22.jpg

 

Minnows aren't a part of a summer flounders diet because the two just don't cross paths very often if ever. Minnows rule their little domain that includes all those countless miles of very narrow shallow tidal creeks and along the edge of sod banks and bulkheads. Their secret to their success is to stay in water deep enough so the gulls and terns can't get to them and shallow enough so predators like the flounder can't get under them. You won't find them in open water or out in the open where flounder can get to them. Never really thought about it that much over the years until I learned about the minnows by trapping them. then I realized that of all the flounder I have cleaned I never found a minnow in their stomach unless it was the one on my hook. One trip I did find a minnow when I had only been using herring fillets but when I looked closer I could see that even this minnow had been on another fishermans hook because I could see where the minnow had been ripped off  the hook and it's lips had been split. We see the water depth tactic right at our dock. I'll have my drop net down along with at least one minnow pot each baited with bunker. On either tide when the water over them is about a foot deep I will catch many good size minnows but only for about twenty minutes. Then the water deepens or shallows depending on the tide and they are gone even though there is a perfect food source right in front of them. If the tide is rising then they will move on under our dock staying in the safe depth. If it's falling they will move farther out staying in their safe zone. 

Many fishermen come in complaining that they were getting many bites but not able to hook many flounder. When they say that they had many bites where they reeled in to only find half a minnow left on their hook. I tell them they probably had the chance of a good catch of crabs but not flounder. The dental work on a flounder is awesome with teeth larger and even sharper than a bluefish but they don't mesh. About the only critters in our back bays capable of cutting a minnow in half are blueclaw crabs and bluefish. Everything else swallows their food whole like stripers, weakies and summer flounder. Their teeth are designed for one thing only. For grabbing a target and holding on. If you feel like you are missing flounder then look for the right signs. Sometimes flounder just gulp it down while other times they seem to like to just hold on to it for a minute and thats when many of us miss them. We set the hook and come up empty. When this happens while using minnows look at the minnow closely. You will see lines of scales missing from the sides of the minnow as we yanked it out of the flounders mouth the ragged teeth just removed the scales. Then look under the neck of the minnow. Almost 100% of the time you will find the skin pulled back right behind the throat of the minnow. classic sign of a missed flounder. 

A little tip to help when flounder fishing and they just don't seem to want to take the hook.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

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don't know why but I couldn't start a new post until I reposted the old one first. 

 

Where to fish?  Have caught summer flounder all over South Jersey including the Ocean, Delaware Bay and the back bays. My father who loved striper, blue, tuna and wreck fishing only wanted to fish for flounder in the back bays. I remember one day in 1962 when I was twelve we were out in the back behind North Wildwood flounder fishing when a big sporty came by real close to us on their way out through the inlet. Back then we kept our fish on a stringer and when the sporty returned he told me to hold the stringer up. The look on those guys was priceless and they yelled, where did you catch them. Dad just smiled and pointed straight down. One guy looked up to the bridge and yelled, why did we run all the way out there. My dad looked at me and said, "don't run over fish to get to fish. Stay close and fish longer" Made that up on a sign and have it hanging outside the shop. Still makes a lot of sense.

When I commercially trapped minnows I hit every tiny feeder creek from Stone Harbor to Cape May in my 16 foot flat bottom aluminum jon boat. Being out there every day sometimes all day gave me incredible knowledge over a decent amount of water. I was able to pick up on the pulses of the tide and the direction the strength of the tide flows. Made me understand that waterway knowledge was way more important in the back bays than the Delaware Bay or ocean. Open water you find the flounder schooled or at least bunched up and it's game on. In the back you have such a difference in water depth that you need to know where to position your boat. Example. The very first show I ever did was back around 1990. Back then I wrote a fishing article for a paper out of Ocean City. It was early spring and I get a call from this guy who produced a fishing show down here in South Jersey. He was getting ready to start a new season and had been out with a few fisherman a number of times and didn't have one show done. He was not a fisherman but did the video and editing and commercial sales. He found my number and called asking if I was actually catching the fish that I was writing about. We ended up meeting on my boat and out we went. Now he had never been in the back to tape so he was very curious as to where we were going. Headed up this one narrow creek in my 21 foot CC and set up for the first drift. He was up on the bow with the camera and I was in the stern fishing and running the motor. He looked over the side and then at me with big eyes and said, I can see bottom. I just smiled and said that I'm fishing in 20 feet of water. Thats how much of a difference 21 feet of boat can make when fishing skinny waters and the better you know them the more fish you will catch.

When you know the back bays you understand things like one area produces well on the incoming but is a dud on the outgoing and the opposite for the next spot. You get to know little things that add up to more fish. I would much rather fish a smaller section of South Jersey and know all or most of it's little secrets than fish a larger area and do a lot of guessing. You can look at any section of water anywhere that has a current and there will be a channel. Even large flats areas have one or many slightly deeper slots from the water running over them a little faster. May only be a matter of a few inches deeper but it makes a difference. Flounder as well as any other predator will pay much more attention to these areas. They are natural funnels for small crabs and baitfish to move through. If you know where these slots are you will catch more fish than if you are up on the flat area. go out one day on the last of the incoming tide and don't bring any tackle with you. Perfect time is before the summer flounder season opens. Then just motor back and forth and up and down and sstay on your depth finder to find these little funnels. Make a map and you have plenty of ladnmarks in the back so whenever you go out you can basically put yourself real close and dead on with a little fine tuning. 

If any of you drive down Route 47 into wildwood you pass Pier 47 Marina. Directly across 47 from them is a shallow body of water that comes right up to the road. So shallow that it goes dry at low tide. It's about a hundred yards wide and maybe three or four hundred yards long and just feeds out into a much larger shallow sound. Not a lot of fast water moves through it but like I said, there will always be a deeper channel. Here are two pics at low water and you can see that the channel runs much closer to one bank than the other and It also has a few twists and turns to it. I wouldn't try to get in there and fish but it does make for a good pic to show what I'm talking about. Every body of water will look like this if you could manage to remove the water. So get out there and do a little mapping and find these slots because the flounder know exactly where they are and they will be there every day they are in the back bays. You will get lucky if you drift across them now and again but you will get good if you know where they are and drift down them. 

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Earlier I spoke about our cameraman saying that I beat a spot to death. One of the hardest things for fisherman to do is stay put. We drive ourselves crazy as we imagine tons of fish being caught where we ain't. We think it's always better over there or around that next bend. If we stay on our spot that has proven over the years to produce fish then it will produce if we just give it time. Going back to the pic of the flounder in the aquarium ready to strike the grass shrimp. I sat on a chair and watched the flounder sneak right up to the shrimp. Then it took about two minutes for it to decide to strike. There is so much food in our back bays that predators never need to jump all over a target because another target is close by. I can make multiple drifts over the same area with nothing to show for my effort then for whatever reason the next drift pays off big time. Critters who live by ambush don't do well by running around all over the place. Hide in plain sight like the flounder and just wait it out. If I'm drifting an area a few hundred yards long and nothing happens in the first two drifts I will try a few different things. If I'm using a bucktail I'll go to a single hook. Live minnow to a frozen shiner or strip bait. Still nothing then I'l go to whatever my favorite rig is that day and work the area harder. Will run the motor and constantly bring the boat to a stop then when I begin moving again I'll stop the boat again. Without a doubt this tactic has put the most fish in my boat over the years. The longer we can put a bait in front of a flounder the more fish we catch. Simplest rule out there. I believe that on many days a flounder just needs to see our offering multiple times before it strikes. 

I do a lot of float rig fishing in the back bays. In fact over the years it is slowly becoming my favorite way of catching summer flounder. I guess it goes back to catching sunny's with the old cane pole when I was a kid. Something neat when you see the float go down that is fun to watch and knowing that a fish is on the line. the float rig is a sliding float that freely goes up and down your line as apposed to the old clip on float that stayed in one place. There is a little rubber stop that goes on your line first and you can set it at any depth you like. If i'm in eighteen feet of water I put the stop at about sixteen feet. One you drop the rig in your line slides through the middle of the float until it hits the rubber stop. More about that later. So when I use the float rig I pick one of my favorite spots and drop the anchor. Then drop the float rig in and let it slide to it's preset depth and feed out line. Now the boat is anchor but the float rig just drifts down with the current. I have about 150 yards of line on my spinning reel and I can spool it and still see the float. I know flounder are what we call bottom feeders but their eyes are always looking up and if you hang a bait over their heads long enough, they can't resist striking. The float rig keeps your bait away from the crabs, snags and most seaweed and on windy days it just slowly drifts straight down in the current and is a killer rig. I can't tell you how many times I can run the float rig to the spool with nothing happening then bingo the fish attack. They just need to see the target multiple times to get them to pull the trigger. 

If you want to see the float rig in action then just google this. Go to Utube and look for "jcf fred and frank float rig fishing" We are anchored up and drifting the float rig over the same area time after time and yet the flounder strikes are well spaced out showing that it takes multiple drifts sometimes to get the flounder to move on a target.

If interested there is another video, "Jersey Cape Fishing episode 2 from a few years back on opening day of summer flounder. It was cold and windy but I used the motor to position and direct my drift and it paid off. I believe these are both half hour shows. If you get a chance during these cold short days then check them out.    

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Whenever I explain the float rig to customers they usually ask what my favorite bait is. Without a doubt it's a nice live minnow but everything works even plain strip baits because the float is always bobbing on the surface waves and that in turn makes the strip bait bob up and down. But hands down a live minnow going crazy on the hook a few feet off the bottom is my favorite. I make a joke and tell people that the minnow would rather be out flopping around in our parking lot than dangling a few feet off the bottom. In fact I had to use very short leaders about ten inches long or I ran into trouble. When I first started messing with this rig about twenty years ago I kept running into one problem. My leaders were over two feet or more long figuring I wanted distance between the hook and swivel and split shot. My problem is that when I reeled in I would find knots in my leader and couldn't find out why until a very clear water day at the dock. I dropped the float rig in with the long leader and watched as the minnow hung about a foot off the bottom. I could see that the minnow was trying hard to reach the bottom and when it couldn't it started to swim around in a wild panic. A few feet off the bottom is the last place a minnow or any small fish wants to be. That is the kill zone down there where every predator cruises just looking for a small fish mistake. Stripers, blues and weakies will always cruise near the bottom looking for their primary food source, the grass shrimp. While I'm watching the minnow swim wildly I was amazed to see it actually swim the leader into a knot. Just pure luck that it was able to swim a loop in the leader then pass through it but it happened enough times that it became a problem. With the short leader the minnow no longer has the leverage to swim it into a knot.

There are two reasons a live minnow works so well on a float. First is it's alive and moving around and that draws attention but the second reason is less obvious. All fish are born partially camouflaged. Just about every fish out there is very light like silvery white on their bottom and much darker on top. When a predator even gulls and egrets are above looking down they have a difficult picking out a target that blends in with the dark or murky waters. And a predator below looking up has a problem picking out a target that blends in with the bright surface waters. If you stand out you will be spotted. Seen this in our aquarium when I would dump a load of live shiners (spearing) into the aquarium for food. The shiners instinct right away was to dive deep to escape but the predators were below waiting and a bunch of shiners were gone in seconds. those that survived would quickly head towards the surface just like we see them around our docks. Now they were using their natural camouflage to blend in with the bright surface waters and the feeding just about came to a stop. I would watch the small stripers we had line up form and angle below and move in and up to strike only to stop about a foot short. The shiners would just move off a little and the stripers would take a big swing and a miss as if they couldn't see them any longer. I wa curious so I got down next to the aquarium near the bottom and looked up. I could clearly see the shiners from below and on an angle as I was about two and a half feet below and about five feet behind them. But then when I moved my head up and towards the shiners they became harder to see because they were getting lost in the surface glare. When I got real close I totally lost them sight of them just like the striper. When you put a minnow a foot or two off the bottom their silvery white belly works against them as they stand out in the murky darker bottom water. It would be like a minnow swimming on the surface upside down. It would stand out to everything above it. 

Always say that it isn't so much the color but the shades of dark and bright that makes the difference in our offerings. Seems like every time I talk about back bay fishing I always end up referring to when I caught minnows. Probably my most informative times I ever spent on the water. Thats where I got to see and understand the shading technique that nature gives to animals. When I minnowed I didn't stay in my boat but got out and walked the meadow tending my traps. Get to see a lot more nature that way and also understand how everything works out there. Just say that it's low tide when I head out and anchor my boat against the sod bank. I took my time and walked the skinny little tidal creek to pic my trap spots. Then when the tide started in I would bait them and put them in place. First the very small and baby minnows would head up trying to stay in front of the bigger minnows that would eat them like you wouldn't believe. They do eat their young. Then the real big minnow would head up followed by the average size we see in bait shops. I had to be ready to move my pots to keep up with their movements because once the water got deep enough they were gone. Minnows with that wide mouth and big teethe will scrounge the bottom as the tide rises, eating anything that died or became exposed during the low tide. All they need is water deep enough so the egrets who camp out along those creeks can't see and get to them. But they also draw a fine line so that they aren't in deep enough water so some predator like a small flounder can sneak in under them. So hugging the bottom with their darker top body color helps them avoid the egrets. If I hang too long as the tide rises I stop catching minnows and start loading up on shiners that thrive in deeper water not concerned with attacks from below because the silvery white belly makes them almost invisible to attackers from below and gives them the opportunity to feed on plankton and tiny creatures that are up on or near the surface. As soon as I saw the first shiners in a minnow pot I would pull them and move further up the creek to shallower water. This process was worked in reverse during the outgoing tide. Once the tide was high enough where the water reached the grass it was time to head in. Then the minnows went on the real hunt as they moved into those grasses to feed on small snails that lived on top of the meadows. Couldn't catch another minnow until the outgoing went below those grasses. Lots going on it the back bays and the more we know the better fisherman we become. Right now it's a sleeping giants ready to release all it's nutrients into the system that will support the back bay hatchery this spring. It will start in March when the meadow releases all the dead grasses that become food for the plankton and then the games begin.        

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