We don't get a lot of summer flounder (fluke) north of Cape Cod but Massachusetts Bay is one of the best places in the world for catching its smaller but tastier cousin, the winter flounder. The fluke's main range is from the Carolinas to Cape Cod and the winter flounder's main range is from the Delaware Bay to Nova Scotia. As the names suggest, summer flounder move inshore when the water is warm, winter flounder when it is cool. While the fluke is an aggressive predator of other fish with a large, toothy mouth, the winter flounder has a tiny mouth and is a stalker of invertebrates like sea worms and shrimp. Finally, the winter flounder is a a right-facing fish, fluke a left-facing fish.

Winter flounder populations have suffered terribly from commercial overfishing everywhere outside of Massachusetts Bay. Habitat destruction in the bays may also play a role. In Maine they were decimated as by-catch of the (now collapsed) Maine shrimp fishery. Here the population was strong until the 1980s when it experienced a serious fall thanks to overfishing and pollution, but they have been recovering since the 90s and stocks are considered stable, though not as populous as they once were.

Personally, I don't eat commercially caught winter flounder, it just isn't sustainable. I do fish for them however: local stocks are doing OK and recreational fishermen usually don't have much impact on saltwater fish populations (striped bass are an exception).

Seasons and Locations

The winter flounder bite is best when the water temperatures are in the 50s, which up here means late May to early July, and picking up again in September after the heat of summer has passed.

Flounder are bottom fish so you need enough weight to get down there. I fish for them in anywhere from 10' to 40' of water, in areas that have a sandy or muddy bottom with some patches of weeds and rocks. As with most fish species, a monotonous bottom doesn't yield much. You can tell what sort of bottom is down there by just bouncing the weight around.

Drift vs anchor

I prefer drift fishing, covering ground to find fish rather than anchoring and attempting to draw them to me with chum. I find the prospect of anchoring, dropping chum, pulling anchor and repeating, tedious and messy, especially from a kayak. People who do use chum like to use a mix of clams and corn, or even cans of cat food.

Drifts however are contingent on wind and tide working together. A fast drift makes it hard for the fisherman to keep his baits on bottom and hard for a slow fish to commit to the bait. I catch more fish on a slow drift but too slow and it defeats the purpose of covering ground. Worse, flounder have two contradictory preferences: they like to take baits from behind, and they like follow the current. If the wind is moving against the current, say if a West wind is blowing over an East-moving tide, the baits are moving against the current and the flounder will not attack them head-on.

If the drift is too fast I use a sea anchor to slow it down, and if the drift is directly against the tide I just go fishing for something else.

Bait:

I've caught winter flounder on lures but never intentionally, bait just works better for me. The main prey of these flounder are invertebrates like worms and shrimp, most fishermen therefore use worms or clams. Some people use nightcrawlers because they are cheap but the saltwater kills them in a few minutes. I like seaworms, they are far more robust.

One benefit of seaworms is that they can be preserved by pouring kosher salt on them, which kills them, and then wrapping them in paper towels to absorb the water leeching out, and sticking them in the freezer. The shrunken, salted worms seem to work just as well as fresh, probably because they stink.

Rigs:

There are a couple of things I don't like about commercially available winter flounder rigs:

First are the narrow-gap wire hooks. The purpose of the narrow hook is to fit inside the flounder's tiny mouth with the result that the flounder often swallow it. I suspect that is why the hooks are made of wire and have long shanks, to make it easier to tear out of a gut-hooked fish, which of course kills it. Handled correctly, a gut-hook is not necessarily fatal. The best thing is to just clip the line and throw the fish back because the hook will often rust out and be expelled in a week or so. The best bet is to purchase a flounder rig with the bigger hooks, like a size 10: smaller fish might steal the bait but bigger ones are more likely to get lip-hooked instead of gut-hooked.

Sturdier hooks are also big help in landing the stripers, dogfish and skates that often hit flounder baits only to straighten out the standard wire hooks.

The second thing: commercial rigs are generally double rigged, either high-low or side-by-side with a plastic spreader. This is a holdover from the good old days when flounder were more plentiful. Back then, having two identical baits made sense because you could often pick up a double header, but that isn't likely anymore, so there is no reason for the redundancy. If I lose a hook off a commercial rig I don't bother replacing it, and I don't seem to catch fewer fish.

I've started making my own rigs with a pre-snelled #10 flounder hook, a three way swivel, and a wire snap for hooking on the weight. Works fine.

A lot of fluke fishermen will use a high-low rig with the "high" hook acting as a teaser. The high hook might occasionally catch a fish but it is really there as a visual attractant while the main bait is underneath. This strategy could work for the winter flounder which are also visual hunters.

Keeping the catch:

In most of the United States the limit on winter flounder is two fish, but in Massachusetts, North of Cape Cod, the limit on flounder is 10 fish, and the size limit is 12".

I see no point in keeping ten fish. Maybe someone who goes fishing once a year would do that but I can go fishing pretty much any time I want. I usually keep one, and keep more only if I am going to be visiting friends within a day or so. I also don't see the point of keeping a fish under about 14", there just isn't enough meat on them to make them worthwhile.

Flounder don't need to be bled as much as oily fish do, but it still helps the flavor. If not bled they have a slight fishy aroma which I don't find offensive but which other people might. I usually just slash the gills until I reach an artery, let them bleed out in diver's bag hung over the side of the kayak, and then stow them in a bucket once they are dead. Ideally I would have a cooler with ice and seawater in it, but my kayak doesn't have room for that.

Preparing and cooking the fish:

Flounder are typically filleted, skinned, and fried but I prefer them baked whole. This is how I prepare them:

  • Thoroughly scale the brown top side and give the white side a quick scrape. The white side doesn't have many scales.
  • Remove the head and guts by cutting through the meaty "shoulder" close to the head and down towards the gills and through the backbone. Give the head a pull and the guts will come with it. Keep cutting away at the flesh on the sides without puncturing the guts and pulling on the head which will eventually tear off with the guts attached. This will leave the edible gonads inside the body cavity. I suppose if you wanted you could go through the gut and pick out the heart and liver and stick them back in the body cavity but I don't bother.
  • Remove the fins with kitchen scissors. This is an optional, mainly aesthetic, step.
  • Slash the fish a few times on each side, top to bottom, down to the bone. This will help it cook evenly and let seasoning soak in.
  • Sprinkle kosher salt on both sides, wrap in paper towels, and stick in the fridge for an hour or so. This helps draw out excess moisture.
  • Preheat oven to about 350. Cut up some root vegetables. I think baby potatoes and fennel are essential, onions and garlic cloves are good to add too. Put them in a baking dish with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and herbs (rosemary and thyme for me) and stick in the oven for about 30 minutes or until almost done. I usually give them a stir halfway through to keep them from burning or sticking.
  • Once the vegetables are pretty much done, lay the fish on top, smear with olive oil making sure it gets down in the slashes, and lay more herbs on top of the fish. At this point I also like to add some tomato and lemon slices, maybe fresh basil if I have any. Cook for another 10 to 15 minutes.
  • To see if the fish is done, stick a fork in the thickest part and then touch it to your lip. If the tip of the fork feels cool, it still needs to cook. If it feels warm, the fish is done. The skin is edible but if you are unsure if you got all the scales it peels off easily enough.
 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​