Fluke Options Poll

[Reel Class]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

can anyone here ever remember catching a quanity of fluke in April ?? not saying maybe they were not here but tradionally we were all winter flounder fishing

IM talking someones fishing log showing that , not just thinking it might have happened

early May had always been just that EARLY except for some of the mud flats, channel fishing usually got good the 3-4th week in may .

Sure the water is warmer this year , but the fish have still moved out, not like they stopped at the mud hole.they still need to make their trek back .

We have caught fluke in late April on many occasions while flounder fishing, especially in the river when we had an "open" season on fluke (open all year with no closure). There are times when we caught more fluke than flounder, and have caught plenty of keeper sized fluke while doing this. Log books show this in certain years in the 90's and early 00's - nothing as recent as 07' though. In the 80's, for whatever reason, the earliest I have EVER catching a fluke was early May with many flounder entries INTO the month of June.

Usually the boats in the Highlands have that quick shot of fish out at the CG station and the bug light and that usually happens from the last week of April into the second week or so in May - its traditional and its pretty dependable as every year that seems to go on.

For our ocean fluke fishing, we really haven't seen a good bite prior to Memorial Day in my memory or in the log book.

In fact, up until the early or even mid 90's, alot of the "fluke boats" that sail out of our inlet bottom fished up until the 15th or so of June, then started fluking. This mind you, was when we had no or little restrictions on tog and seabass, and had ling and whiting inshore in the spring.