Winter Flounder Fishing

[Gerry Zagorski]

Man I used to love fishing for and eating Winter Flounder.....Not many people fishing for them these days with only a 2 per person limit but have heard some 2nd hand reports of them being around so it might be worth a shot.

Found this old article I dusted off, enjoy!!


Early Spring and late Winter Flounders put on the feed bag here in the NJ coastal area bays and rivers. They are one of the best tasting fish in our waters and a great way to begin and end the fishing season. In the Spring it usually starts off in the end of March and lasts though mid May and in the winter December through February. If had to choose only one season to Flounder fish it would be spring and one month it would be April. Once the water temps get in their comfort range of high 40’s low 50’s is when they will be most active.

The early bird doesn’t always get the worm….

One of the things I like most about fishing for Flounder in the Spring is that you don’t have to wake up at 0: Dark 30 to get in on the hot bite. The fishing is usually the best mid day on when the sun has had an opportunity to warm the water. I also tend to try and concentrate my Spring fishing during an outgoing ebbing tide rather then an incoming flood tide. Here’s my reasoning….Incoming ocean water is typically much cooler. As that cooler water floods the bays and rivers it often times turns the fish off. Once that water gets back in the shallow bays and rivers it has a chance to be warmed by the sun. The warmer water flowing back out on the ebb is often times what triggers them to feed. Another thing to look for when Floundering in the spring is dark or muddy bottom. The sun has a greater warming affect on darker colored objects then it does lighter so it stands to reason areas with darker bottom will be warmer and warmer water triggers feeding. The opposite is true in the Fall since your looking for cooler water to put them into their comfort range and get on the feed.

As far as rigs simple is better in my book. A single hook and sinker will do. If you’re using corn to chum add a yellow bead above the hook. Store bought pre tied rigs work well here so no need to tie your own unless it’s something you like to do or want to save a few bucks. For bait I prefer blood worms or clams. I will usually bring both and see what works best. If you don’t intend to chum I would lean towards clams since they leave a better scent trial in the water and are more likely to draw the Flounder in.

A few tips to remember when fishing for Winter Flounder on an anchored boat...
- Chum heavily. Frozen Chum logs and Chum Pots can be purchase at most any tackle store. I like to use 2. Cut some slits in the side of the plastic bag containing the chum log, place it in the pot and send it down to the bottom. If the tide is rushing you may have to add some weight to keep the pot on the bottom. Don't forget to tie a hook and a leader off your chum pot. This is a sure way to bring a few extra fish over the side.
- In addition to Chumming break some fresh clams over the side to lure the fish in. Some people also do this with cat food or canned corn.
- The fish usually hang out in a small area rather then being spread out all over the bay so if your not catching move. Once you find a spot that produces and it slows down either let out or take in some anchor rode so your boat moves position slightly. This is often times enough to get the bite going again.
- If your fishing in shallow waters and have something that can reach the bottom like an oar stir up the bottom a bit. This will often draw fish in looking for an easy meal.
- Bounce your sinker off the bottom. The puffs of mud it creates is often enough to draw fish in.

I hope this helps some people new to Flounder fishing this spring. My first trip will probably be around Easter. Once the Stripers show up I will switch over to them.

[Gumada]

Great write up Gerry,

And when chumming with a pot tie a double hook rig to the chum pot baited with clam. But be careful of the current possession limits...many flounder latch on to the hooks close to the pot....

[team heat]

Do you have any favorite early spring spots.I know shark river is good but since the dredging I not sure how it's going to affect them.I'd like to try manasquan river for them but have never fished for winter flounder on that river.

[bulletbob]

Do you have any favorite early spring spots.I know shark river is good but since the dredging I not sure how it's going to affect them.I'd like to try manasquan river for them but have never fished for winter flounder on that river.

Personally, I like the shorelines of Raritan Bay between Keyport and the Highlands.. The shallow flats off Keyport and Union Beach were something special at one time.. Still some there, and they are bigger than what you'll find in the rivers... Its a later fishery,, later in April through may.. I have caught them there in mid summer as well. BIG ones... contrary to popular belief, some flounder stay in the bay all summer.

We used to catch a lot of them drifting on days when the wind was light and it was an extremely effective way to find the concentrations.. Plain old flounder rig, with tiny yellow twister tails on the hook shank, and a small glob of mussels was deadly.. NO bait of any type is better than mussel snot.. That includes sand/blood worms...
Thats all we used at one time, and it was all we needed.. when we anchored, we would bat a few mussels around the boat to get them started/.. nowadays, you pretty much have to chum I would think, but i would bet money that yellow sinkers or small yellow twister tails on the hook work as well today as they ever did.. Flounder have this weird thing about anything yellow... bob

[Gerry Zagorski]

Do you have any favorite early spring spots.I know shark river is good but since the dredging I not sure how it's going to affect them.I'd like to try manasquan river for them but have never fished for winter flounder on that river.

Not my area so limited knowledge but the Manasquan River is as good as any place to start.... Early I'd be looking pretty far up the river in the area where the canal comes out and further up and on the Barnegat Bay side of the canal as well..

[torchee]

I toss clams out front at sandy hook for bass every spring late april - early may.
We always put out a flounder rod or 2 with worms.

Seems like when we time it right you can catch 2-3 in the wash as they leave Raritan bay -and the river. And maybe a bass as well...... So they must still populate Raritan.

Great kills holds flounder as well. I think its open this year.

[torchee]

Bob is right, def add a yellow grub....
people would put corn on to add yellow to the worm when i was a kid....

[WhaleFart]

Flounder fishing is a love hate for me, I almost only fish on land for them... for me its either an all out skunking or a slaughter. From land you can chum them with a pot, some dog food and some cooked yellow rice. I do the basic two hook rig with sandworms, however when they are active and you run out of bait you can catch them on sabiki rigs jigged on the bottom... most of the flounder i clean have mainly grass shrimp in them so it makes sense. I like posted above have caught them in the middle of summer in the river (Manasquan). Biggest flounder I got was about 4lbs off the surf mdw about 10 heads ago on a 6/0 hook.

[Irish Jigger]

Our annual trip to visit my brother in Mass early spring is always phenomenal flounder fishing. Boat is out of Quincy Mass for half day $450 up to 4 anglers and have never been disappointed. Non stop from start to finish and bring home 20 plus pounds of filets and fish up to 4+ lbs. 12” and 8 fish limit per man bag limit. Any other info pm me

[Ice Cream Bill]

Gerry,

Great seeing you, Joey da Fish and Dales529 at the RFA booth in Edison!

Irish Jigger: I am booked for Sunday July 8th on that same boat in Quincy. Capt is holding Sat pm trip if I want as well. May and June trips are all booked.

He is not a sponsor on this site, but I need some NJ Fishing guys to join me—feel free to PM me if interested. Limit is 8 flounder per angler!

Bill

[Irish Jigger]

Bill, Capt Jason is no joke when it comes to blackfishing either. Our flounder trip is always the first or second week of June. Has never let us down.

[hammer4reel]

Its been about 10 years now since they lowered the limit to 2 fish .
pretty sad it got to such a low point before the fishery was let crash.
If not rebuilt by now who knows if it ever will.

Fishing in Shark river and the Raritan bay was phenominal.
I'm sure the bay still has to have a decent run.

Shark river is so silted in with fine silt I don't ever think that fishery will come back.
The only way it would get good there again is if the state was forced to dredge the whole river. and that wont happen, we had a hard enough time fighting to just get the channel dredged correctly.
95% of the river is silted in .

They can take all the money for sand replentishment yet cant just do what should be done once, and be good for another 50 years there


.used to really enjoy being out there in march fishing for flundies.
yellow sinkers, BIG chum pots of chum we made ourselves. ( was a fun winter project BUSHELS of clams)
now even hearing the huge clam beds surrounding sandy hook are not producing 1/10th of the clams they used to .
Things are changing fast in the wrong direction

[Reel Class]

The saddest part about this post Gerry is that 15 years ago when I started chartering, till about 2010, I would be already prepping the boat to be in the water next week for the start of our flounder season. The calls were there, the anglers were there, and the fish were (and still are!!) there in the Manasquan River and Barnegat Bay. Makes me sad, but also makes me grateful that we were able to cash in for so many years with this great fishery. We caught tons of fish, threw back tons of fish, and of course kept our share for the table. The 10 fish limit was great as we were able to take what we wanted - where the bag limit is now makes targeting them inshore a complete waste of time for charter and party boats.

What upsets me more though is the lack of fish up north in the Shrewsbury/Navesink and the raritan bay. That really is disheartening.

Here's some pics, from between roughly 2002 and 2010. Back then I didn't take nearly as many pics as I do now so these are just from roughly 4 or 5 trips - all on the seaswirl!

[Skolmann]

Our annual trip to visit my brother in Mass early spring is always phenomenal flounder fishing. Boat is out of Quincy Mass for half day $450 up to 4 anglers and have never been disappointed. Non stop from start to finish and bring home 20 plus pounds of filets and fish up to 4+ lbs. 12” and 8 fish limit per man bag limit. Any other info pm me

Capt. Colby on the Little Sister no doubt.

Been fishing with him since the early 2000’s.

When I first started fishing with him we’d also limit out on #4-6 cod fishing in the same spots we fished for flounder. I’d book Saturday PM and Sunday AM trips and almost always limited out on both trips with cod and flounder. Sadly, cod are rarely if ever caught in the bay anymore. Out of @15 trips, I think we’ve l8mited on flounder 14 times but we set a boat minimum length of 14”s even though I believe the MA size limit is 12 or 13. Caught many #3+ and a few #4+ flounders with him.

[Ice Cream Bill]

Skolmann and Irish Jigger,

That’s the boat! I stopped into a bait shop last month in Scitiuate, MA and was told “he’s the guy”. I’m looking for people for my July 8 (maybe July 7th pm) charters. Who’s in? Send me a PM with your phone please.

My friend Jeff owns Daddy’s Beach Club in nearby Hull, MA. About 20 mins from Quincy. Live music 5 nights a week. Great pizza and beer. Let’s make a road trip!

Bill

[Down Deep Sportfishing]

Capt. Chuck with Skip a Dory charters is another top producer in Boston

[dakota560]

The shame of it all is this fishery was as dependable as it gets, year in and year out. Flounder were so abundant and the mark of a healthy fishery, you'd catch fish of all sizes. Postage stamps and few inches long up to jumbos and everything in between. Healthy mix of males and females as well. Wouldn't be unusual to catch 40 or 50 fish a day from shore with no chumming back in the day. As Danny mentioned, I fished with my parents right on the wall next to the boat launch in Belmar all winter long. Winters were tough with the cold but you still caught fish. Spring fishing was ridiculous for everyone. When the fished started heading out, we'd fish the inlets for a few more weeks and did as well, both Belmar and Manasquan and the Highlands had it's own incredible numbers. At Sandy Hook when the fish started moving out moving, Flynn's Knoll and the Cedars would heat up along with a tremendous ling fishing at the Cedars. This fishery with closed seasons and two fish limits, hard to say what happened but for years this was like opening day trout is for fresh water guys, spring flounder fishing was the much anticipated beginning of the season.........can't understand what happened to it much like ling / whiting....a fishery that couldn't possibly disappear and has. Commercial fishing, cormorants eating the young, seals etc. something significant has happened in the cycle or these fish are being netted by commercials. See enough of them i the markets, they're coming from somewhere. Even in years when stripers were abundant, and I'm sure a fair share of flounder fell prey to them, the fishery showed no sign of weakness every year and now it's just vanished. For the younger members on the site, you have no idea how great this fishery was and from shore, no need to rent a boat or chum the fishing was that great. Sad to see it go the way so many other fisheries have, it really is unbelievable.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Gerry,

Great seeing you, Joey da Fish and Dales529 at the RFA booth in Edison!

Irish Jigger: I am booked for Sunday July 8th on that same boat in Quincy. Capt is holding Sat pm trip if I want as well. May and June trips are all booked.

He is not a sponsor on this site, but I need some NJ Fishing guys to join me—feel free to PM me if interested. Limit is 8 flounder per angler!

Bill

Good seeing you too Bill.

[Krablips]

Hi, any recent reports? Wondering if it’s worth going out this weekend. Thinking about going to Shark River or PP canal (river side). Thanks

[Gerry Zagorski]

I don't have any first hand reports but Easter weekend is usually around the time it starts.

[Reel Class]

When we had warm winters fishing would start prior to St. Patrick's Day. Usually though, that was the date where guys would start giving it a real effort.

With a winter like this, where the water is still in the 40 degree range going into April, fishing would be sluggish to start and could last into May.

With that said, fish are being caught, just some, in the usual early season cold water spots. Bright sunny days will be good until the water starts warming, and then thereafter it should only get better.

...Still a shame with the 2 fish limit - that's really disheartening for the spring fishery inside where the fishing is good!

[Setthehook]

Hello and great post. What are your thoughts about fishing for flounder off the shore by the tennis courts in Belmar? I haven't fished for these flatties in many years and am going to try on Easter Sunday. Any advise would be helpful, even if it is trying a different area. Thank you

[Gerry Zagorski]

That used to be the hot spot... With all the recent dredging things have probably changed but that's as good a place as any to start...

[Halibuttech]

the water is 39 f up here in southern nova scotia and it will be a while before the flounder start to move in to shallow water. usually the 2nd week of may is a good time to start fishing for flounder but I usually do not catch my 10 limit in the first of it.