Flounder on Fly

Bright blue mornings with sparkling sun and glassy seas had me thinking of flounder.
They’re something of a lazy man’s fish in that regard – the sort of fish you can go fishing for when it’s already 11.00am and you realise you’re wasting a cracker of a day.
So I dug in the cupboard for flounder flies, gave Ben a holler as to my plans, and threw a fly rod in the car. It would only take a few minutes to have a look.

My gumboots had leaks in them and the water looked cold, so I headed for the boat club. A small jetty there allows an expansive view of mudflats on a rising tide. If the flounder were starting to move in it would be fairly easy to spot them.

Parking the car on the beach, I walked around the back to get my rod out, and cast an eager eye over the shallow muddy bay. Instantly I saw one. It was fizzing around in the shallow water right by the car and swimming straight for me. Within seconds I was shooting a fly in the air, staying low, and creeping up carefully on my target. The fish was a reasonable distance off the beach, so I lengthened my back cast in order to reach it – and promptly hooked the tree behind me. Doh!

Frantically I tied on another fly, thrashed the water to foam a little more, and watched as a totally spooked flounder took off for parts unknown.

An increase in the wind spoiled any chance to progress the flounder fishing any further that day. For good flounder stalking you must have flat-calm conditions in water that’s shallow and clear enough to see your target before they see you. An incoming tide is essential, too. This is when they will be actively swimming, out and about and digging for food, rather than just sitting hidden in the sand or mud.

Weather conditions were forecast to improve, so cunning plans were made for a return the next day. Flies were tied, wetsuit booties found, and a spear sharpened – just in case. Cold weather from the south had killed the local rock fishing, so flounder chasing looked like a great option for filling in some school holiday winter days.

Flounder are actually very aggressive and voracious predators. They will pounce on virtually anything that looks alive, just so long as it is within a metre of their face and small enough to fit inside their mouths.

Fly-fishing is ideal, and two metres of light nylon tied to a long thin pole with a small fly on the end works just as well as any proper fly gear. Very often the fish are that close. All that is needed is to flick the fly out and tease it past the flounder’s nose. The hard part is getting the flounder in your field of vision, spotting it before it spots you, and delivering a fly without spooking it. Sounds rather involved, I know, but it is actually not that difficult.

The first fish I found on our return had me screaming. I had to cast a short length of line to it, and I was so jumpy I missed the strike. Then I missed the next strike, and the next. The fish was whizzing about, getting all excited, continually jumping on the fly, but I kept striking against nothing.

Immediately I would flick the fly straight back in there for another go. The flounder would attack the fly again, but kept spitting it before I could get my rod in the air. I think I missed six strikes before the fish spooked (and it says something about the brain power of flounder after tasting the fly six times). I cursed myself all the way back to the shore. As the tide had only just turned and we had yet to see flounder in any numbers, I was worried that I had blown a good chance.

Thankfully I calmed down for the next fish. With my flounder hunter’s adrenalin now under full control, I dropped the fly directly in front of the next fish sighted and eased the fly forward ever so gently. The flounder immediately propped up on its fins and jumped forward. I told myself to watch the body language of the fish and not the fly. Soon the flounder’s back arched and I whipped the rod tip up. There was solid resistance. Fish on!

This is where flounder fishers have to start waxing lyrical about how nice flounder are to eat and what fun they are to catch, as they are not a fighting fish. Possibly a dinner plate would fight harder. They do put a nice bend in a light fly rod and spin around wildly over the sand and mud, but don’t expect any reel-screaming runs. The main action is in the excitement of the stalk, the careful placement of the fly in front of the fish, and the highly visual flounder attack on the fly. An added bonus is that the best flounder-fishing days are those sparkling spring mornings when the bays are like glass and the whole flounder sand-flat environment is a pleasure to behold.

On this day, having rediscovered my flounder-on-fly mojo, I quickly pinned three more, getting four in total. It would have been possible to catch a heap more, but the wind kept coming up and ruffling the surface water, making spotting difficult.

So we tried spearing them instead. However, while spearing at night is very successful, we soon discovered it’s almost a complete waste of time during the day. A flounder in spearing range quickly becomes a hastily departing flounder as soon as you lift your arm. Fly fishing is easily the more successful flounder-fishing activity during daylight hours, and luckily it is a great way to spend gorgeous spring mornings. The fried flounder that follows for lunch is pretty darned good too.

	This article is reproduced with express permission of NZ Fishing News written by Craig Worthington - 2011 Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited Originally published in New Zealand Fishing News ----- Advertisement -----