With family and friends in town for the 4th, I cleared my work schedule and didn’t book any charters. The ocean was a zoo anyways, and the inlet so confused with boat wake it looked as if we had a hurricane coming through. But, nonetheless, the water was beautiful – breezy enough to keep us comfortable and not rough enough to be uncomfortable.

But, with friends and family comes fishing – and folks wanted to catch flounder for dinner. On Sunday, I took out some friends who wanted flounder for dinner – best part was that our friends had never really fished before, let alone for flounder. Team Waterdog (my fiancé Katie and I) had its hands full. We motored out to AR-315 to find approximately 25 boats in the vicinity—it appeared that the majority was slow-trolling for kings and a handful of boats were also anchored up near the buoy dropping shrimp and cut bait. During the two hours we spent on the wreck, I saw less than 3 or 4 fish caught between probably 40 boats.

Anyway, I anchored up in a “spot” of mine and opened up the livewell. I only had a couple dozen mullet minnows, and our friends, being inexperienced anglers, went through bait quickly. Within 15 minutes, they had 4 legal flatties in the box. Within an hour, we had tallied 12 keepers (all between 15 and 18 inches) and ran out of bait. So, I used a sabiki rig and managed to catch a bunch of big, hand-sized pinfish. Not my favorite bait – but what else were we to work with? We dropped two right under the boat and immediately – BAM! Two fish on –landed both fish (two flounder over 4lbs). Pictured is a 5lb 1oz citation that easily would not have been a citation had he not eaten the 8oz pinfish we offered him. Two hours after arriving, we left the spot after landing 19 legal flounder (didn’t catch a single short). We kept 5 for dinner and released the rest.

Our guests were actually worn-out pulling up these big fatties – most people don’t realize how hard it can be to lift a big flounder from the bottom when in 50 feet of water. With huge smiles on their faces, I couldn’t have been happier or prouder – flounder aren’t easy for even experienced anglers to hook! The bite just seems to get hotter and being that I spent the majority of my time tying up new rigs and trying to catch bait and dozens of missed fish– their average of 10 fish an hour is simply incredible. We probably had hookups on 80% of our casts. The bite just seems to get better and better – and when the big fish don’t show, use bigger baits!