White rag and maddies are also excellent in the surf, again all year round. The top surf bait for flounder has to be lugworm all year round, with peeler or soft crab a close second from March through to October.
#Flounder fishing how to
Having the booms able to slide via the neoprene stop knots means you can adjust the booms to fish baits closer together to increase the scent trail, or position two booms closer together to put two baits hard on the seabed if the fish are intent only on taking food from the lower hook and ignoring the other baits.įollow our guide on how to make a three hook boom flounder rig in our Sea Fishing Rigs section. Often the biggest flounder are caught at night when they venture closest in along the surf beaches, and especially after a good blow has ripped shellfish from the sand in the autumn.ĩ.
Flounder are masters of camouflage and care little whether its daylight or dark. There is a myth that flounder do not feed at night. They drop back with the ebbing tide but do not move far away from the surf tables and are often one of the few fish that will continue to feed well as the tide ebbs away. Flounder, like so many other fish, hunt the parallel gullies that many storm beaches have, and will also settle down in hollows and deeper gutters feeding on foodstuffs washed down to them.įlounder move inshore with the tide and feed right in amongst the last two surf tables happy in shallow water just a few inches deep. If such water carries colour and is acidic from the mountains, or peat stained when in Ireland, then fish move away from these to purer water. Good spots on open beaches to locate flounder are small freshwater streams that flow across the beach, but only if the water is clear. They favour clean sand, or mud and sand mixes, but will also happily live tight into mussel beds and in amongst rocks and boulders on small patches of clean sand.
They are found in higher numbers on the beaches adjacent to estuaries but can also be caught on open beaches well away from any freshwater influence. They will take small fish such as sand eels and fry.
Their diet is made up of worms, broken shellfish including cockles, clams, mussels and razorfish, shrimps, crabs, but they are also somewhat predatory. They begin returning as thin, spent fish as early as mid-March in the south, but typically mid-April further north. This is typically in the period from November to March. Though an inshore fish, flounder migrate offshore into deep water to spawn. Over sand, they can be a light fawn to dark brown, but when living on mud or shingle will take on a grey/green colouration, sometimes with darker mottling. Flounder can occasionally cross breed with plaice.įlounder can vary a little in colour. Both can show orangey-yellow spots on the back, though typically those on the plaice are much more defined, those on the flounder are diffused and lacking real colour. The dab has neither of these but look at the lateral line above the pectoral fin, and this shows a clear high upwards curve and is unique to the dab.Ī common mistake made by anglers is wrongly identifying a flounder as a plaice because it has faint orangey/yellow spots on the topside.
#Flounder fishing series
If you look at the plaice, this has a series of raised bony knobs.
The main difference with the flounder is that it has a series of prickles along the forward lateral line just above the pectoral fin. In this guide, we take a look at how to target flounder from the beach, estuary and a boat.Īlthough the flounder is quite distinct, there can be confusion between this, the plaice and the dab. Ask a sea angler what fish they first recall catching, and it will likely be a flounder. Preferring to hunt close to the shoreline of beaches, estuaries and creeks, they can often be fished for just a few yards out and with simple tactics. They’re one of the easiest species to catch, abundant and in areas that even the most novice sea angler can easily target.
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