Fishing Around: It’s Time to Load Up On Flounder!
C.J. Walsh with a midsummer keeper flounder.
The best Memorial Day weekends at the Jersey Shore require your favorite hooded sweatshirt. While those west of the Parkway rock flip-flops and tank tops, the slightest easterly breezes send seaside temperatures into the low 60s due to the ocean’s cooler temperature. These cooler waters create interesting angling opportunities for fishermen fixing to fish over the next month.
The fish that’s on everyone’s lips and (hopefully) in everyone’s skillet is the flounder. I like mine sautéed in butter and olive oil. If you do, too, invest a fish spatula this summer. I don’t know what it is about a flounder that captures the imagination of so many shoobies, but everyone has an opinion on the health of the fishery, current regulations, and how to catch them. Let’s break all three down.
There are plenty of flounder at certain times in certain places. In May, captains Joe Hughes and Al Crudele found plenty of larger flounder while casting soft plastics for weakfish and striped bass. This inshore migration of larger flounder is well-known to marine biologists and it is believed that these larger fish exit the inlets in early summer. More, but smaller, flounder flood local bays in June, where they feast on spearing and grass shrimp until they, too, depart local bays for nearshore structure in late August. Captain Mike Smith found these fattened fish on local artificial reefs in the last weeks of the 2017 flounder season. Most summer flounder spend winter and early spring in the deepest parts of the continental shelf, where local commercial fishermen catch them in large quantities in large nets. Just ask your favorite fishmonger.
After a busy spring regulatory season, New Jersey anglers are permitted to keep three flounder larger than 18 inches per person each day from May 25 through Sept. 22. While a few of us had to release larger flounder in May, more of us will have the opportunity to catch more larger fish on local reefs after Labor Day this year, as long as a hurricane doesn’t send them packing.
With flounder season open for Memorial Day, let’s get you ready for your first flounder dinner of 2018. Back-bay high tides are in the morning this weekend, so you can power wash porch furniture, take friends for a boat ride, and grill burgers all before dark. Keep an eye on your temperature gauge to see if a pattern emerges. Hopefully you have unearthed your favorite light spinning rod before reading this. Visit your local tackle shop for new fishing line, whether monofilament or braid. I use yellow 20-pound Power Pro braided line on my smaller spinning reels. Each batch lasts me at least two years and I can feel every bump and bite. Instead of traditional high-low rigs, anglers on the Chuckwagon bounce 1-ounce chartreuse or white bucktails tipped with matching Gulp! Swimming Minnow baits. When I say “bounce,” I mean it. Years ago, Gary Twiggs and John German showed me a bouncing wavelength far more aggressive in frequency than amplitude. These quick hops will incite a flounder to leave its sandy lair to strike your jig. See my Instagram feed for the proof (@cjwalshiii). As the season progresses, add a live minnow to your rig, whether on a dropper loop or a separate leader. Summer’s smaller flounder, live minnows, and new anglers are a great combination to mint the next generation of fishermen.
Whether you’re in Ludlam Bay or Paddy’s Hole, you’ll note the thousands of shorebirds feeding on sandbars exposed by the falling tide. These ruddy turnstones, red knots and myriad sandpipers are part of a great avian migration that spans the length of the Western Hemisphere. While the Delaware Bayshore beaches are better known feeding grounds, The Wetlands Institute executive director Lenore Tedesco knows that our local bays (and Stone Harbor Point) are part of a larger grocery store for birds on a 9,000-mile, one-way migration to the high Arctic from the edge of the Southern Ocean. As the pace of the outgoing tide increases and the grass becomes a nuisance, take a few minutes and appreciate our seasonal visitors.
While morning high tides fill bays full of boats, nighttime outgoing tides will find area inlets and jetties full of fishermen. Memorial Day’s full moon ushers post-spawn striped bass from their natal rivers back to the coast, where millions of bunker fix their postcoital hunger. In their migration north, these larger fish regularly move into the surf zone under the cover of darkness where dedicated surf anglers greet them around the Cape May Peninsula from the Ferry Jetties (the western end of the Cape May Canal) to Avalon’s 8th Street Jetty. Unlike April’s smaller striped bass, these fish can test your tackle. Bring a 7-to-9-foot spinning rod with a reel with at least 150 yards of 30-pound braided line and use a 30-to-40-pound leader to connect you to your swimming plug. Reel as slow as you can, because nights like these are where #BigFishHappen.
Smart anglers head offshore this month when a Gulf Stream filament collides with an offshore canyon. The canyon’s upwelling brings nutrient-rich green waters to the surface, which feeds millions of hungry micro-organisms in the warmer, bluer and less-fertile Gulf Stream waters. Biologists often talk about how the “Edge Effect” creates ecosystems. This edge absolutely congregates squid, which move closer to the surface at dark and deeper as the sun rises. Squid are the favorite forage for whales, dolphins, tuna, sharks and swordfish. To maximize your fishing opportunities, consider an overnight fishing trip this June to the canyons. Troll ballyhoo and spreader bars at 6-7 knots in areas where the current pushes into the canyon wall, creating rips. You’ll see the squid and tuna on your depth finder and the marine mammals around the boat. Don’t stray far from these areas; eventually the tuna will bite.
As the sun sets, be prepared for the best shark fishing of the season. With the short nights around the summer solstice, rig some baits, start a chum slick, enjoy dinner, and assign 1-2-hour watches until dawn. Ideally, a crew member thawed a flat of mackerel and rigged shark baits before dinner. Those same skipjack that beat up your ballyhoo yesterday make great mako snacks, whether whole or filleted. Keep one in the cooler ready to toss to that curious shark in your chum slick. Before he started Tournament Cable, Chuck Richardson was bullish on learning the haywire twist and using circle hook for sharks. Consider a two-part leader with a wind-on monofilament leader connected to 5-6 feet
No. 10 single-strand wire by a large swivel. Some nights, the blue sharks won’t leave you alone and, on others, you’ll get the right bite right away. Either way, invest in bolt cutters to make releasing sharks safer and easier. New federal regulations require that a mako shark must be 83 inches to be harvested. I have no idea how to measure an 83-inch mako shark (weighing at least 200 pounds) before applying a harpoon and/or bangstick to it. When the sun rises, you can keep drifting or put the ballyhoo and spreader bars back out for a few more tuna.
Welcome back to summer fishing and all of the opportunities that it presents. Find time to get on the water this summer and make it your best yet!