Swimbaits hopped around creek mouths also account for plenty of flounder. (Photo courtesy of Z-Man)
January 28, 2025
By Frank Sargeant
This spring may be the best time to go flounder fishing around Florida in several years. It’s been four years since the FWC shut down harvest of these tasty flatfish during their annual spawning run from mid-October through November, giving all those escapees time to grow into quality table fish. When the fish move back into the passes, bays and estuaries this spring, it should be game on for legal sized fish 14 inches and up.
Florida’s flounder—southern and gulf—are often thought of as an “extra” species caught accidentally by redfish and trout anglers, but it’s possible to target them, even outside what used to be prime time in the spawning runs out the passes. And they’re well worth learning to catch. There’s no better tasting fish in fresh or salt water.
Keeper-size flounder, most of which are females per FWC biologists, live most of their lives in inshore waters. They take advantage of the doormat profile to settle into mud or sand bottoms and wait for prey to come swimming by. While they can chase down slow-moving prey like shrimp, the keeper-size fish seem to prefer killifish (aka “bull minnows”), finger mullet and small sardines.
Whopper flounder like this one are always females, and are often found around nearshore wrecks and artificial reefs. Where to Find Flounder Because flounder are fairly sedentary in their feeding method, they usually settle into areas where bait is likely to come to them on moving tides. Find the baitfish and you often find the flounder, whether you’re prowling the marshes between the St. Johns and the St. Mary’s or poling into the spartina-lined creeks at Cedar Key and Steinhatchee.
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Anywhere a small creek drops into a larger creek or slough can be particularly good, because millions of the tiniest baitfish hang in this habitat as they grow to edible sizes or 2 to 3 inches, just right for most flounder.
Of course, larger flounder can readily grab a 5- or 6-inch finger mullet or a fat croaker if one comes by, and they’ll rarely turn down a shrimp drifting along on the tidal flow.
Flounder also feed in runouts and troughs along the beaches from spring through fall. They also like areas where marsh grasses blend into creeks or tidal rivers, with a nice wide mud or sand shelf next to the cover. This allows them to burrow under the muck and wait for bait to come swimming along the edge of the grass.
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Areas where oyster bars sit across the direction of flow, with narrow cuts down the middle, as in Crystal Bay off Crystal River, that can also be productive. And areas where a larger mangrove-lined bay necks down between oyster shell islands before passing out into open waters, like Sarasota Bay, Charlotte Harbor or Tampa Bay, that can also be prime.
All of these areas fish best on strong falling tides because as the water drops the little fish have to leave the extreme shallows and run the gauntlet over the flounder waiting hidden in the bottom.
They also hang around scattered rock along riprap inlets, and large ones sometimes feed on bait swarming around pier pilings. Some even use crab traps as bait attractors, settling close to the cage and grabbing minnows as they swim in and out of the mesh.
They get into surprisingly shallow water at times—basically anywhere there’s 12 inches of water there could be a flounder on bottom.
Live shrimp are good flounder baits, but often get nipped off by pinfish before the flounder finds them. (Photo by Frank Sargeant) Live Bait Flounder Rigs Standard rig for fooling flounder is the Carolina (or slip sinker) rig—a sliding sinker big enough to cast easily and hold bottom well goes on the running line. Typically, a ½- to 1-ounce sinker does the job, though more lead might be needed around riprap on large passes where water is deeper and tides are stronger. This goes through a plastic bead to protect the knot, then attaches to a size 1/0 swivel.
The leader, 18 to 24 inches long in 20- to 25-pound-test mono or fluorocarbon, is tied on to the swivel, and then to a size 1/0 or 2/0 Kahle-style hook in light wire. The lighter hooks do a better job of keeping small baits like killifish (highly recommended) alive. Go in through the mouth, and out through the nostrils to hook them up.
A good baitwell is a must for successfully fishing live finger mullet and shrimp. Finger mullet 3 to 5 inches long are also excellent, as are 3-inch pinfish or grunts. Basically throw a castnet on the grass flats and any tiny (legal) fish you come up with is flounder fodder.
Live shrimp also works well, but in many areas there are so many pinfish and other bait stealers that you can’t fish them.
An alternative rig for live baits is a swing-head jig like those from Strike King and Z-Man . These jigs have a free-swinging hook on which the bait can be attached, creating an offering that’s much easier to cast than a Carolina rig, but that still allows baitfish some freedom of motion.
A jig head with soft plastic like the Mirrolure Marsh Minnow also draws plenty of strikes. (Photo courtesy of Ray Markham) Artificials for Flounder While live bait usually trumps artificials if you know where the fish are, when you’re searching for the mother lode, artificials let you cover a lot more water in less time.
While a plain quarter-ounce jig with a flavored bait like the Berkley GULP Mullet , Z-Man Scented Door MatadorZ or a FishBites Dirty Boxer alone catches plenty, you’ll often catch more with a tandem rig.
Flounder feed partially by scent, so scented lures like these from Fishbites can be highly effective. (Photo by Frank Sargeant) This includes the jig, as above, but a size 1/0 straight shank weedless hook is tied into the leader about 15 inches above the jig with an overhand double loop.
A second GULP Mullet or Dirty Boxer goes on this hook.
Now you’ve got what apparently appears to the flounder as a couple of stray edibles wondering away from the school. You’ll nearly always catch more with the two-lure rig than with a single, even though most of them still grab the jig rather than the upper hook.
Gulf flounder are often found in clearer water than southern flounder, but both species are common in Florida waters. (Photo by Frank Sargeant) You can also catch flounder on unscented lures. One very fast way to eliminate water is to throw a gold spoon like the Johnson Silver Minnow around likely flounder habitat. Add a strip of mullet belly to give it a bit of scent. Of course, plenty of redfish are a bonus with this lure.
Any gear that casts these rigs well will work for flounder—a typical 7-foot medium light or medium spinning rod, 2500 reel and 15-pound-test braid is ideal.
Small flounder can be eviscerated, broiled and served whole (Photo by Frank Sargeant) Filleting Flounder The first time you face a flounder at the cleaning table, it may give you pause—there appears to be nowhere to start.
Actually, with fish that are just over legal size, 14 to 15 inches, it’s just as well to take off the head, gut them, scale them, score the skin and then brush with melted butter and a little Cajun seasoning before broiling the whole fish. Flounder is some of the finest tasting fish in the sea and this process lets you savor it at its best.
For larger fish, filet down either side of the lateral line on the top of the fish—the dark side—first. Make a cut down that line, and then fillet back toward the edges, cutting around the ribs—you get beautiful boneless white meat. Then turn it over and do the same on the white side—the fillets on this side are a lot thinner, but on a 2-pound fish or larger there’s enough to go after.
These fillets can be broiled with a bit of butter, or floured and fried, though with a fish as tasty as flounder adding flour and grease really does not do it justice.
Southern flounder seem to prefer killifish or mud minnows over all other baits, though they readily eat small sardines, shad and pinfish. (Photo by Frank Sargeant) Threats to Flounder Now that recreational anglers have bit the bullet and accepted closure of prime fishing time during the spawning run, by far the biggest threat to flounder populations is shallow water shrimp trawling. Trawls pulled in water from about 3 to 20 feet deep over the grass flats run right through the heart of the habitat where baby flounder grow up and the nets catch millions of them each year—50 to 60 percent of each trawl is small finfish in many areas, and most of these go back over the side dead.
The trawlers are also allowed to keep legal flounder caught as bycatch, up to 50 per trip, and during targeted fishing from Dec. 1 to Oct. 14 each year, 150 fish per trip, then 50 fish per trip during the spawn.
While this amounts to a lot of flounder, FWC at this point feels it won’t severely limit the flounder restoration efforts due to the relatively low number of commercial harvesters. Hopefully, they are right.