Admitted cheater

We can’t get our minds off of flounder.  A little more exploring at the estuary was definitely in order, but we were on a mission to see if there were actually any flounder left in the area so we took desperate measures.  We found a great place to pump some sand shrimp (yes bait!) so we went out yesterday with just that in mind.  We did end up fishing with some of the sand shrimp on light tackle spinning rods at the end of the day on an outgoing tide and had a pretty good time.  Yeah, it’s not fly fishing, but that will come later.  Yesterday night with the sand shrimp we did end up hooking a dungeness crab, a bull head, a greenling, and a tiny flounder. With confirmation that the flounder are not extinct in this area, we were pumped to make a day of it the next day.

Thinking that it would be best to fish the south side of the estuary on an incoming to high tide, we showed up a little early.  We’re still using the light tackle spinning gear here.  No fly rods were brought this day because we were out to see where a major population of flounder were.  It ended up being a greenling show.  We brought our good guide buddy along and he caught about 20 (roughly) greenling.  That was really the only type of fish we saw aside from a few bullheads and a couple of asshole crab that wouldn’t stop stripping our bait.  Although, it was kind of fun seeing if you could slowly reel the crab in all the way to the rocks before they let go.  We decided to pack it in and head to the north side of the estuary while the tide was still coming in.  Luckily on a Tuesday, no one was in this particular spot.   

Now, despite being only a couple of miles away, the tide was already toward the end of slack high when we got here.  The crab stripping was doubly bad here, but I’ll come back for them later with the right equipment.  It took a little bit to find just the right habitat for flounder (deeper clear flats with some surrounding underwater low growing vegetation), but it turned out that our presentation had been correct all along.  We just had to find the right spot.  Basically you cast out as far as you can straight across, or even quartering upstream if the tide is starting to rip out.  You want your weight (or fly) on the bottom.  Slowly retrieve (and I mean painfully slow) so that you’re keeping your fly as close to the bottom as you can, basically just giving it some action while canvassing a large area.  Flounder are ambush predators so even though we were fishing bait, they really wanted to see it moving.  We had no takes when the bait was stationary.  This was actually pretty reassuring, because it ups our chances greatly with the fly rods.  From what I’ve read online it looks like we’re still going to do better if we dip our flies in some stinky, but I’m not opposed to that.  I’ll try it naturally first, but I like winning.  

So, finally I started to feel this subtle pecking.  It was actually hard to figure when to set the hook because it never really felt like the fish had committed.  It’s not a rapid peck, but a series of single spaced individual pecks.  Peck...peck...peck...little pull...peck....little bit longer pull.  The whole time, I kept with the slow retrieve, which I think led to the fish finally committing.  I still didn’t feel confident that the fish had the hook in its mouth, but I was kind of afraid that if I waited any longer it would lose interest.  On the last longest pull I finally set the hook.  Flounder just kind of get lazily pulled to shore right up to the point where they are almost touching it, then they kind of light up.  I really just wanted to get the damn thing to shore so I could touch it.  Even with letting it really get its mouth around the hook (I thought) I had barely lipped the fish.  Their mouths are seriously tiny!  Bring skinny hemostats.  

So, I finally caught a starry eyed flounder, and then our good guide buddy caught one in the same area right after.  This all happened at the beginning of the outgoing tide.  As the tannic river water started to mix with the sea water in the outgoing tide the fishing completely shut down, presumably because the fish were headed back out to sea.  

It was an awesome time though, and we are seriously jacked to take our fly rods back out there on the right tide and see what happens.  The funny thing about these two areas of the estuary that we’ve been fishing is that they are incredibly inconsistent.  We’ve fished the same way on on a variety of tides and can never replicate the prior experience.  The tides have been coming in at slightly different heights, but on our part, we haven’t changed much about our presentation.  So, look to the future for my post on fly fishing this area for flounder.  It could be good, it could be great, or we could quit flounder for the year.