Early Season Fluke: Spring Rigging & Hotspots - The Fisherman

Early Season Fluke: Spring Rigging & Hotspots

2018 5 Spring Rigging Hotspots MAIN PHOTO
After locating the warmest water in the area, author put The Fisherman’s Rich Dunn onto this early season river fluke.

Whether targeting Delaware flounder now or Jersey flatties come Memorial Day Weekend, the tactics and itinerary are much the same.

If you’re an angler looking at targeting fluke in tidal rivers and bays during the first few weeks of the season, you will likely be faced with several challenges (nay opportunities). Included in this list of challenges is finding the warmest water available, using the best rigging to tempt the resident fluke, and finally locating a few hotspots, which should harbor a sizeable population of fluke (or just flounder as folks generally call them in the back bays of Atlantic and Cape May).

At the top of the preceding list of early season challenges is finding the warmest water in the area you’re fishing. To address this challenge, you’ll need an onboard temperature gauge and an accurate tide chart. The gauge will tell you the temperature; the tide chart should tell you approximately when the outgoing or ebbing tide will likely start.

Consider how the fluke season of 2017 started with a series of overcast days, rain, cooler air and winds out of every quadrant of the compass. This caused most tidal river anglers to ride the crest of a slump in terms of adding fluke to their coolers. On one occasion, the water temperature of my favorite tidal river was 66 degrees, while in another section of the river less than 2 miles away, the water temp was a cool 59 degrees. Guess where the most fluke were caught during the spring of 2017? Yep, in the 66-degree waters on the outgoing tide.

Seek Warmer Waters

Unlike other species, which require you to set your alarm clock for 3 a.m. to begin casting lures just as the eastern horizon starts to lighten, early season back bay and tidal river fluke tend to be more concerned with which tide gives them the warmest water so that they can start feeding. If this magic hour occurs at 11 a.m. you should have time for that second cup of coffee or a quick stop at the local deli or diner.

Have you ever noticed that spring fluke in tidal rivers have mud on their bellies? This is a clear indication that the water is especially cool, and that the resident fluke have hunkered down into the warmer mud. When waters are cooler for May kickoff, you may have to motor around to find waters that are a few degrees warmer.

While most onboard electronics have a temperature gauge as part of their multi-function deptfinder or fishfinder, you can always pick up a standalone water temperature gauge. If you’re a kayaker, cartopper and aluminum skiff fisherman without much in terms of electronics, such a unit makes finding fluke holding areas as well as warm water very easy to achieve.

Since the waters of most tidal rivers and bays are less than 15 feet deep, a surface temperature reading should be similar to the temperature at the bottom in which the fluke are residing. If however, you’re fishing the ocean during the spring and summer months, there will likely be a 14-degree difference between the surface and the bottom in 50 feet of water. The bottom will be much cooler.

Not all tide charts are created equal. For instance, the chart will indicate the start of the incoming tide (flood) as well as the time at which the tide will begin to ebb (outgoing). There is a short period of time (depending on the location) that the flood and ebb tide will stop and just stand still. In my tidal river, this stop of the current usually lasts 20 minutes, but this changes depending on the phase of the moon.

2018 5 Spring Rigging Hotspots DOUBLE BUCKTAIL
Try using different colored Gulp! on double bucktail rigs; should one color outfish another, switch out all rigs. Remember to keep it light and simple for early season fluke in the back.

Back Bay Rigging

Contrary to the summer months where big baits like whole squid, live snappers, salmon belly, and whole smelts are used to catch the majority of the legal fluke, early season fluke, where the waters are still cool are best tempted by smaller baits and rigs. In my case, I prefer to use two rigs in the early months of the fluke season.

The first is a double bucktail rig on which is placed either a live bait or a Gulp! swimming mullet. I tie this rig by placing a 1/4-ounce white bucktail at the end of a 25-pound leader that’s 36 inches long. Approximately 12 inches farther up the leader, I place another similar bucktail using a dropper loop. At the other end of the leader, I tie a small black swivel, which is attached to the running line of my reel. When hopped along the bottom from a drifting boat, this pair of bucktails resembles a small school of baitfish trying to avoid a hungry fluke.

Normally, I sweeten this brace of bucktails with either a live bait (minnow, killies, mummichogs) or Gulp! If you’re really sneaky, try using two different colored Gulp! lures, which will show you if the fluke have any preference to a particular color depending on water clarity.

The other rig I like to use is a “Wonder Rig.” I didn’t invent this rig, but I find it especially effective when the fluke are sluggish due to cool waters. To tie this rig, attach your reel’s running line to the upper eye of a t-shaped swivel. To lower eye of the swivel, tie a 12-inch length of leader to which you attach a 1-ounce white bucktail. To the final eye of the swivel, tie a length of 25-pound test leader onto which you tie a 4/0 Octopus style hook which is sweetened with a live bait.

Some sharpies will cut the hook off the bucktail especially if there are loads of weeds and mussel shells along the bottom. This trimming of the hook saves time in having to clean your Wonder Rig from bottom debris. With this rig, the bucktail gets your offering to the bottom, and acts as an attractor while the trailing live bait calls out any hungry fluke in the area.

2018 5 Spring Rigging Hotspots GLASS MINNOW
Pre-tied Tsunami Hi-Lo Glass Minnow Jigging Rigs allow you to run your favorite bucktail below and a 3/8-ounce Glass Minnow as a teaser tipped, with both hooks trailing bait, small strips or Gulp!

Spring Hot Spots

Most of the coastal states covered by The Fisherman have several items in common. For instance, dotting various coastlines are a series of nuclear powered electric plants, which dump warm water into adjacent tidal rivers and bays. Clearly, an area for early season fluke to congregate.

In most bays, there are a series of sedge islands that are snaked with at least one or two tidal creeks. When the tide is flooding, water from the bay flows up the tidal creek to be warmed by the rays of the sun. When the tide begins to ebb and flow out of these creeks, guess where the fluke have set up a picket line waiting for the warm water and bait to flow? Yep, at the mouth of the creek. You can drift this area or anchor your boat at the mouth of the creek and cast sweetened bucktails towards the creek’s mouth.

Some of my favorite early season fluke areas are in those shallow bays where the water is only 4 to 6 feet deep. During the ebbing tide, sand flats are exposed, which in turn, are heated by the rays of the sun. As the tide begins to flood, these heated sand flats will warm the incoming waters. Admittedly, this warming is only a few degrees, but it will still coax area baitfish and associated fluke to these flats. In my home state, two such shallow water spots are Great Bay, and Absecon Bay; though just south along the Intracoastal Waterway between Cape May Harbor and Wildwood you’ll find a few good locations to target (think Jarvis or Grassy Sound).

While those summer flounder will already been on the feed along many tidal rivers from Shark to Great Egg Harbor and those bays and sounds as well, with the May 25 opening of the season it could mean you’ll be competing with a bit of summer traffic on the kickoff weekend. Some of the earliest reported catches this month will undoubtedly come from a bit farther south, where Delaware anglers employing these same tactics will find a few keepers in the back channels and slews around Indian River.

Finding fluke in the spring may be somewhat more difficult than in the summer months; however, the fluke are still there, so it’s just a matter of finding those patches where they’re feeding and staying on top of them.

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