A deep dive on shallow water fluking.
The infamous fluke, aka summer flounder, aka the doormat…it’s one of the most sought-after species we have here in New England and the fluke’s tendency to hang out in relatively shallow water makes it a popular target for all inshore fishermen.
But it’s their aggressive nature and feeding behavior that makes them so much fun to fish for. It’s hard to believe that such an odd-looking fish can strike with such ferocity and precision!
Shallow water fluking requires focus, concentration, sound strategy and precise presentation. You need to pay particular attention to your gear, no cutting corners, from you rod and reel, to your line and leader to you bait, jigs and teasers… it all has to be right. Some people may do it differently, but I’m going to give you a full rundown on how I target spring and early-summer fluke in depths of 5 to 25 feet.
Habits & Habitat
Fluke are very aggressive and effective predators that ambush their prey lying completely flat and looking up with their top-positioned eyes. They rely on their ability to blend into the bottom to hide from their prey, if you’ve ever seen pictures of fluke lying in ambush, they blend in like a chameleon in a tree! In the shallows, fluke relate to areas with increased current, such as current breaks, inlet channels or areas of converging currents. These fish are not dumb, they hunker down in these areas because they know baitfish will be flushed in and out with each tide cycle, providing many opportunities to take down their prey. When drifting through these areas, if you mark bait, it’s a good idea to make a few drifts for fluke and you’ll be surprised by how often this tactic works.
I am fully aware that most fluke anglers concentrate their efforts on deeper water of 30 to 60 feet, or even more, but I have many reasons for fishing shallow. The first one is warmer water. In the spring, ocean waters are still cold, but the shallow flats and inlet backwaters warm up faster, giving the fluke a more comfortable environment to hunt in. Warmer water also attract more baitfish and give them more energy to move around, active baitfish will draw in actively feeding predators. These waters are also rich in dissolved oxygen, which adds more energy to the situation. Lastly, the shallows are loaded with the kinds of ambush structures that fluke love; sandbars, gravel bars, shell beds, rock piles, shipwrecks and grass edges, to name a few.
Moving water is essential to this style of fishing and my experience has been that the last two hours of the incoming tide and the first two hours of the outgoing are the most reliable tide windows for shallow water fluke. And this timing tends to be especially productive in the mouths of inlets and tidal channels. It’s almost like a vacuum, sucking the bait in and flushing it out. Moon tides can amplify the action as the predators feed harder during the short windows of slower current.
Even though the fluke seasons in New England open around the first of May, I won’t make my first drifts until the second half of the month and then try to get really in tune with June. This six-week period presents some of the best shallow water fluking of the entire season. And I seem to get a monster each year during one of the June moons that comes from just 20 feet of water.
Two Setups
Having the right gear is crucial for maximizing your hookup ratio and if you use the wrong gear it’s gonna be a long day! Everything has to be right from your rod and reel down to your line and leader. I actually carry two setups one spin and one conventional. My spinning setup is a 7-foot Tsunami Platinum Maxell medium-heavy, rated for 15- to 40-pound line, paired with a Tsunami Salt-X 4000. My conventional stick is a Tsunami Maxell rated for 20- to 40-pound line and a match this one up with a Tsunami Maxell Hybrid 25, I like this reel because it has a nice smooth drag, and a perfect thumb bar clutch control, that allows you to keep your jigs swimming tight to the bottom.
The rods have the perfect balance of sensitivity and backbone, with comfortable EVA grips and a price that won’t drain the bank account. I spool the reels with 10- and 20-pound PowerPro, which is perfect for cutting through the current and each is topped off with a 7-foot leader of 20-pound fluoro for stealth and abrasion resistance.
The Business End
Fluke rely heavily on their eyesight to ambush prey. Much of what they eat in the shallows will be on the small side and baits like the 3-inch NLBN paddletails and small bucktails, like those made by Jeck’s, excel in these conditions. Always use the lightest weight possible, a good trick is to pitch your jig uptide and watch the line as it drifts back toward you while the jig sinks, this is a cheat code for using lighter jigs. The main thing is you want the jig to maintain bottom contact beneath the boat without scoping out too much. For depths of 10 feet and under, weights of 1/4- or 3/8-ounce are often ‘just right’, and hooking these fish on that light spinner is a blast. I will fish an array of colors including white, chartreuse, pink, orange and glow colors are highly effective and don’t sleep on yellow!
Soft plastics are a big part of almost everyone’s fluke arsenals and scented baits like Gulp and FishBites go together with fluke like butter on toast. The 4- and 6-inch scented grubs are my – hands down – favorites for fluking, in fact I’d say there’s nothing better on the market. The grubs are far more durable than other baits, like the Swimming Mullets and they offer a big, attractive target for ambushing fluke.
Of course, there will be times when the fish will be super finicky and it may seem like you just can’t get a bite on your artificials. When this happens that addition of some meat can turn things back in the right direction. You might add a bluefish or scup belly strip to your bucktail or you might tip your bucktail with a whole bait like a squid, sand eel, mummichog or other natural bait. You may also need to fish a live bait on a hi-lo or slip-sinker rig, the best advice is to be prepared to adapt to the bite and make sure you have all the gear, tackle and baits you’ll need to dial in the bite for that day.
Locate & Dominate!
Success in shallow water fluking is all about positioning the boat and making sense of how the fish are relating to structure. Being ambush predators, fluke will often set up on humps, bars or edges and use the element of surprise to attack their unsuspecting prey. And I’ll say it again, perhaps the biggest factor that foreshadows success, is that if we mark bait, we typically catch fluke.
A huge part of this style of fishing is exploiting edges where the fluke are lying low to ambush bait. These edge areas might be drop-offs, humps, bars, transitions of bottom type, reefs, wrecks or rock ledges. But in addition to these, don’t overlook mussel and oyster beds, grass flats, bridge pilings and the edges of docks or piers. All these places either create current breaks or provide cover or sustenance for the baitfish they are looking to ambush. Do not overlook how certain pieces of bottom provide cover for baitfish, where there is bait, there will be predators.
Another big part of locating shallow water fluke is understanding how these fish relate to the tide, this detail can increase your fluking success by a large margin. On an incoming tide, fluke will push into shallower zones, following the bait. They do this no matter what time of year it is, May, July or September, it doesn’t matter. Focus your efforts around channel edges and transitions to grassy flats. On outgoing tides, fluke tend to stage near deeper holes or in sandy depressions where bait will be swept off of sandy flats and into their ambush zones.
Shallow Water Tech
Mastering the right presentation is key to enticing fluke. Drifting allows you to cover ground efficiently while presenting your bait naturally. This method is all about speed control, you want a slow, steady drift (0.5 to 1.5 knots), and you want to keep that bait swimming right along the bottom. The conditions need to be right for the optimal drift, for example, if you have wind against tide, that’s no good, wait it out until conditions become more favorable.
| STRIKE 2, YOU’RE TIGHT! |
| Fluke often strike as the jig falls, so keep your bait moving naturally along the seabed now traditional when fluking if you get short strikes or your getting bite and not hooking up drop your rig or jig back down quickly and there’s a very high chance you will get that bite again and hook up. I like to say fluke don’t flunk flunking is for college students now get back down there and catch ‘em! |
But it doesn’t have to be all about drifting, fishing in shallow water means that you can cast bucktails and plastics directly at structure, almost like freshwater bass fishing. The keys to this are to place your cast up-current of your target structure and, after the jig touches down, begin slowly retrieving the jig while bouncing it along the bottom. The method mimics wounded baitfish and draws some serious hits. On one trip I landed two double-digit doormats, five minutes apart, casting jigs to shallow structure.
Give these strategies a try later this month and throughout the month of June, I think you’ll be surprised by the numbers of keeper and doormat fluke you find in these relatively shallow waters. And, if you like active fishing like casting to structure for largemouths or plugging for stripers, I think you’ll really enjoy casting jigs to likely ambush zones. Good luck this spring!
