Drifting Easy By Sue Foster 5 18 06 Flounder fishing out of a boat

“I’m putting my little boat in the water and want to catch some flounder!”

Flounder fishing out of a boat is what more than half the anglers in Ocean 
City do. If you look out on the water on a pretty Saturday in the 
summertime, you’ll wonder how a flounder can miss a hook!  If the flounder 
bit all day long, every day, there would probably be few flounder left in 
the bay. But flounder seem to only bite on certain tides and don’t bite at 
all on some days.

Even if we do catch a lot of flounder, new schools of flounder come in to 
our bay from offshore periodically giving us a fresh supply of flounder to 
catch.  Flounder pick up the color of the bottom. When you catch one of 
those real light-colored flounder you can bet it has just come in from the 
ocean. When you catch a dark colored flounder, you know it has been lying in 
the mud in our back bay for at least a few days.

Flounder are “site feeders.”  The flounder lie on the bottom of the bay or 
ocean floor, partially covered with mud or sand. They blend in with the 
bottom floor because of their ability to change their color.  Both eyes are 
looking up. Like most fish, they tend to point their head into the direction 
of the tide.

Some people think they have to “knock” a flounder in the head to get it to 
“bite.” They think the flounder is just lying there and won’t move unless a 
bait is dangled in front of its mouth. Well, this just isn’t true. If you 
have ever watched a flounder in a saltwater aquarium, they are quite 
aggressive.  Once the flounder sees a baitfish or shrimp coming into range, 
it darts out and quickly eats the prey. They will swim “up” for a bait and 
are even known to chase a bait all the way to the surface!  I’ve seen that 
on several occasions.  That’s also why some nice flounder are caught at 
night with lures by anglers casting off the Route 50 Bridge for stripers.

Summer flounder (or fluke) have been photographed underwater lying on flat 
rocks way off the bottom floor! That’s why some anglers do good at certain 
times and tides fishing from rock jetties and on the “ledge” off 2nd through 
4th Streets (on the slacking tides.)

“What do flounder feed on?”

Flounder eat shiners, minnows, and squid and that’s what most anglers use 
for bait most of the tIn nature, they also eat small flounder (yes they are 
cannibals), crabs, shrimp, bay anchovies (those baitfish that look sort of 
like shiners but are real soft with an under slung mouth), small whole fish 
such as lizardfish, and sand eels (they look like long, skinny shiners.)

“How do we need to know to fish for flounder?”

Even though flounder come up off the bottom to feed, most of the time, they 
are lying flat on the bottom with their eyes looking upward. Drifting along 
with a one or two hook bottom rig is your best bet when flounder fishing. 
Since they are site feeders, you will do best when the water is the cleanest 
and the clearest. Usually the water is the cleanest on the last half of the 
incoming tide.  BUT, any time the water slows down, the particles of 
swirling sand and debris sink towards the bottom floor making it easier for 
the flounder to see. SO, tide-wise, the last part of the incoming and the 
first part of the outgoing tide is almost always good. The last of the 
outgoing and the beginning of the incoming can also be quite good (that’s 
either side of low tide.)  AND, sometimes, right smack in the middle of a 
tide (incoming or outgoing) the tide will slow up a little, and the fish 
will bite. (We don’t know why it slows up- it just does- sometimes).

When a tide totally stops, either dead low or dead high, the fish usually 
stop feeding. This is because the baitfish stop moving. NEVER go home 
(unless you have to of course) because as soon as the tide starts moving 
again, the fish will probably turn on!  If you continue to fish during a 
dead high or dead low tide try a slow troll OR try casting and retrieving. 
When everything else STOPS you want to keep your bait moving for the best 
results.

Flounder are obviously going to be lying on the bottom floor where baitfish 
and other things to eat are going to be dropping down towards them. This 
usually happens best in areas of some sort of bottom change. Underwater 
slopes, valleys, inclines, down-clines, ledges, deep edges of sand bars, the 
deep edges close to green marshes, the drop offs close to bulkheads, the 
drop offs close to the Bridges and the edges of the channels are all good 
places to fish.  (That’s why sometimes you see all these boats fishing in 
the channels while other boats are trying to navigate the channels to get to 
the ocean!)


You can feel bottom changes as you bounce your sinker along the bottom as 
you are drifting.  You can also SEE bottom changes. Run your boat up close 
to a sand bar and you can see the bottom. Stop the boat and let it drift 
back into deeper water.  You will be drifting down an underwater slope!  The 
best bet is to start in 3 or 4 feet and let the boat drift down into 6 to 15 
feet (or more in a few areas of the bay.)  It seems to work better drifting 
from shallow to deep rather than the other way around for some reason. But 
don’t let that stop you from trying the reverse! Just remember which one is 
working better that particular day and if it works once, for gosh sakes, DO 
IT AGAIN!

Obviously, a little depth finder of some sorts will be a big help so that 
you can actually SEE the bottom changes and the water depths. But, if you 
don’t have one or are renting a little boat, watch the landmarks and other 
anglers.  Where there’s one fish, there’s usually more! Feel your sinker and 
note where you need to let out more line (yes, that means the water is 
getting deeper.)                
  
Since flounder are site feeders, you will find that weather has an immediate 
effect on your flounder catching luck.  A big rain or blow the day before 
can do two things. It can make the water dirty by either bringing stirred up 
dirty water from offshore, or it can beat on the marshes and land and create 
dirty water from “run off.” A cold rain can also lower the water 
temperatures that can directly affect fishing early in the season. (In the 
heat of the summer if the water temperatures are getting too hot, this can 
be a good thing!)

There’s a big difference from blowing or raining for one day or a few hours, 
and wind blowing constantly for 3 or 4 days when it comes to water clarity. 
It takes longer for the bay to clear up if the water out in the ocean is 
dirty and stirred up also. It only takes one tide to clean up the bay if the 
incoming water from out in the ocean is clean and the bay is murky merely 
from a little rain and runoff.

On normal every day conditions, an easterly breeze is usually good for 
flounder fishing. It brings in clean ocean water. Southeast is usually best. 
A light Northeast is good as long as it is “light.”  West winds are not 
quite as good but no big deal. A hard South wind can make fishing terrible 
as it brings dirty water from the farmlands in the bay behind Assateague. A 
hard North wind is hard to find shelter from.  It can also cool water 
temperatures early in the season.

A falling barometer is a good thing for almost any kind of fishing, and it’s 
true for flounder fishing as well. “Fish bite like heck right before a 
storm!” usually rings true. (Just don’t get caught in the storm!)

Good fishing….

 
 
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