It’s the second season of New Jersey’s “slot” limit for summer flounder, with a three-fish bag limit encompassing two fish from 17 to 17.99 inches and/or one fish at 18 inches and over. For folks with skiffs and smaller boats who never leave the back bays and salty rivers, the opportunity to retain a couple of chunky fish in the 17-inch range has been a welcome bit of regulatory change (on top of the earlier season start and later ending that has come with it.)
Of course, by about this stage of the summer, most of the fluke in our region have headed for deeper, cooler water, with the best action outside the inlets, across the beaches and all along the reefs and snags off the coast. It’s also the time when a lot of bigger fluke are registered locally, with many folks working the sticky stuff finding more “overs” than “slots” which creates a bit of a conundrum with that first 20-plus-incher of the day – cooler fish, or keep going larger?
We’ll see what ’24 brings on the regulatory front, but for now folks are making the most of the ’23 season, whacking and stacking one of the tastiest table fish a Jersey Shore summer can provide.
