Flounder are biting, and I can personally testify to that fact. Friday, my fishing buddy, Royce Ashley, and I hit the water not long after sunrise and headed directly for Pelican Island. Our first stop was near Texas A&M at Galveston, where we did not get a bite.
After 20 minutes, we headed for the cedars, a spot full of the evergreens just around the bend from Seawolf Park. There were several boats anchored along the shoreline from the dredge to near the park, and all were catching easy limits of flounder.
We limited out by 9 a.m. using fingerling mullet for bait. I started with soft plastics; however, when Ashley landed his fourth flounder, it was time to switch to live bait. Most of the flounder were anywhere from throwbacks to around 17 inches.
When we landed our fourth keeper, a 15-inch flatfish, we put it in the aerated live well in hopes of landing a saddle blanket. Several throwbacks came next, then a 16-inch flounder that had been damaged by the hook. That was it for the day.
We released the flounder from the live well and watched it happily swim away and placed the last flounder on ice.
All of the boats around us were landing flounder of about the same size. This likely indicates the peak of the flounder run is yet to come. I can bet Opa Miller hopes it is in December when he can retain five instead of two.
Flounder were not the only fish biting Friday. The remainder of the big three — reds and specks — were appearing on stringers as well.
Capt. Chris Jamail, Hookset Charters, hosted John Boone to a fishing trip in Galveston Bay and had a limit of trout and one shy of a limit of reds while fishing over shell in 4 to 5 feet of water. Red shad Goobers caught all of the fish.
Shirley Pike, Fatboy’s Bait Camp, reported some nice catches by customers returning from a morning of fishing. One group had 20 trout and five flounder using mud minnows and shrimp for bait.
The other party fished Greens Lake and caught a lot of sand trout and a flounder using shrimp.
At the jetties, Capt. Paul Stanton, Aqua Safari Charters, continued to find limits of bull reds along with large gafftop. Thursday afternoon, Stanton hosted the James Khoh group of four from Apollo Travel.
Their catch included four bull reds, all tagged and retained, along with three sizable gafftop.
The reds were caught at the North Jetty Boat Cut, channel side, as the outgoing tide started slacking and the gafftop came from the gulf side of the South Jetty.
Spanish sardines were the bait, and Ronnie Cline was the first mate.
To get your catch in the Reel Report, phone Capt. Joe Kent at 409-683-5273, or send an e-mail to reel.report(at)galvnews.com. There’s no charge for this service.
