Fish on: Shore fishing tips
Early spring —meaning now — is the best time to go to favorite shore fishing locations in and around rivers and bays to fish for winter flounder.
The larger female fish are found in the rivers early in the season, so waste no time getting your spinning gear ready. You’ll need a thin tipped shoreline casting pole 7 feet long, a small spinning reel with 10 pound test and plenty of rigs with multiple flounder hooks.
When buying bait, be sure to get the freshest clams you can. Try to stay away from the frozen pre-cut clams for flounder, because they tend to get washed out too quickly. Instead, use the frozen clams for chumming. Thaw out the clams and use a small can nailed to a stick.
You can use this to effectively throw the chum a great distance from the shoreline to attract the winter flatties. Use a sliding fish finder sinker and cast it just down current from where you throw your chum. If the current is too fast, don’t bother with the chum, but cast into the deepest water you can, since most of the current will occur at the surface.
Use yellow and red beads on your hook leaders. Small- sized Mister Twisters, yellow or white, also work well to help attract the flounder to your bait. Use coin-shaped sinkers that offer the least amount of resistance so you can drag the sinker slowly through the mud. Flounder rely on their vision to find food, so churning up the mud as you reel in is important. The best technique is to retrieve a little and let your bait sit a bit. This gives the fish a chance to eat your bait.
When baiting your hook for shore fishing, cut a worm into 3-inch pieces. Stick the curve of the hook, which is almost pointed on a flounder hook, into the open cut worm. Pull the hook to expose the barb, leaving about 1 inch of worm past the point. When baiting for clams for shore fishing, use the long stringy pieces. They will stay on the hook the best while dragging the rig on the bottom.
If you’re not catching fish in your first hour, move. Find an area that’s protected by the wind with the least amount of current, but not stagnant. Also try casting further or not as far.
The key is to find where the flounder are. Once you catch a fish, try to replicate the cast that caught it.
Don’t fish with your pole resting against the fence or in a bucket. Flounder are attracted to the actions you will make by moving your line and sinker. Dead sticking only works if you cast right into a pocket of fish, and even then you will be sure to only catch a minimum number of them. If you are fishing from a bulkhead or pier, scrape the barnacles off the structure and let them get caught in the current. This is a good way to attract fish.
