While redfish and speckled trout often get more notoriety than the lowly bottom dwelling flounder, it seems that there is a special thrill seeing a big flat fish wallowing around the surface at the end of your string. More and more, it seems, anglers are now keying in and targeting these delicious fish.Flounder fishing has always been a passion of mine, ever since I was a kid wading the hard bottom back bays of St. Augustine. Back then, all I needed was a handful of mud minnows and a Carolina rig with just enough weight to let me drag the minnow around. The featureless sandy bottom would allow me to fish all day without fear of being hung up or broke off. In fact, I chose to fish these areas so I wouldn’t get broke off. As I graduated to small boats and trolling motors, a Flounder Epiphany of sorts, came to me. I had found out that my biggest flounder were coming from structure laden areas that I was targeting trout and redfish. And not only that, but big flounder were suckers for artificial baits as well! Don’t get me wrong, big live bait fish will still take their share of flounder, but covering water in heavy structure was producing more quality fish for me. By targeting docks, rocks, wrecks, bulkheads, shells and other structures, I began to really dial in where larger numbers as well as larger fish lived. My preferred method is to use products made by Berkeley Gulp! Pegging these highly scented plastics to light jig heads, allowed me to cover twice the water in half the time. Yes, I lost some rigs, but my catch rate continued to rise. White is my preferred color, but I’ve spoken to many other anglers targeting flounder that use many different colors of plastics, but most agree the highly scented products produce more fish.

As we enter into summer and fall and trout and redfish may scatter in the heat of the day, I suggest tying on a plastic and bounce it around some serious structure. Not only will you dig up some nice flounder, you might be surprised to find out where those redfish and trout are hiding as well!