Now and again i go fishing for flounder in fresh water areas. Have caught tons of yellow belly up as far as Matamata, in the waihou river.  Just small fly's or ordinary garden worms or very small lures/softbaits. Can be hell fun in shallow water as they can put up a fight at times. You would prolly be amazed how many there are in the damn river.  A few other trout fishermen have also mentioned catching flounder in the waihou as well. Capt A has also metioned this.  theres a few other threads on this subject on fishing.net if you look.

what about somewhere near Auckland?!...any idea where? Ty

Try the common garden worm Boulder me old mate, they work a treat

Graham in the south Island they use sweet corn as ground bait for them and a long shank hook with a piece of corn as bait, 

Wanda_Ra wrote: Now and again i go fishing for flounder in fresh water areas. Have caught tons of yellow belly up as far as Matamata, in the waihou river.  Just small fly's or ordinary garden worms or very small lures/softbaits. Can be hell fun in shallow water as they can put up a fight at times. You would prolly be amazed how many there are in the damn river.  A few other trout fishermen have also mentioned catching flounder in the waihou as well. Capt A has also metioned this.   theres a few other threads on this subject on fishing.net if you look. Have caught the odd turbot with very small softies at river mouth entrances.Had an 80cm one get away once off muriwai a few years back.   A lot of people look at you like your mad though, when you tell em you fish for flounder.   At the right time of year those yellowbelly are chocka full of whitebait,so somethinf that looks like that would prolly work wonders.

Wow! I thought turbot don't live near shallow water

I think these are called limerick hooks ,I got them in a bunch of stuff I got off an old guy who had given up fishing ,'parently they are good for flounders ....not sure why.
I had an interesting discussion on the estuary riverbank with a fish and game ranger re the needing a fishing license seeing as how I was using a method "likely to catch a sports fish " as per the schedule in the sports fishing regs . I won on the grounds that any one fishing for flounder in an estuary didnt need a license and thusly would not read said schedule ,and also because I pointed out that if one was to accidently catch a trout one would simply return it asap as one would with a trout that didnt meet size requirements or a salmon caught accidently out of season ,or a trout caught in a whitebaiting net. I dont think my argument would hold up if I wasnt in a tidal zone .......or didnt have 3 flounders and no trout.
Worth thinking about tho 🙂

There’s a good channel on YouTube called Weka digital media, he catches flounder on softbaits around Whakatāne. He does well worth checking out plenty of good tips.