I woke up this morning inspired by all of the great people I met at last night's Fort Bend CCA meeting where I spoke on spring speck and flounder strategies. Since this weekend will see a lot of us out there on the water, I thought I would share a few things that can help you catch more flounder.

To consistently catch large numbers of flounder you cannot have the same mindset as if you were pursuing speckled trout or redfish. Flounder are compressed laterally and they lie on the bottom waiting for the tides to bring them food. They rarely go out and chase bait around for long distances. They will get on feeding frenzies and chase shrimp on the flats for example but this is rare. They rely on stealth and being in a location that offers them a high opportunity of encountering baitfish.

For the angler that means targeting high probability areas. These include the mouths of cuts (bayous, creeks, etc.) feeding from a marsh into bay systems, stands of roseau cane around bayous or along bay shorelines, passes linking bays to other bays or Gulf to bays, seagrass beds and various manmade structure such as pilings.

I have covered that extensively in articles and seminars and I think most people have this part down. However, I am not sure everyone quite grasps the importance of thinking like a flounder acts for presentation of lures.

Most of the time (with winter being the exception for most anglers) lures are fished with a medium to fast retrieve for speckled trout and redfish. Think of using a Rat-L-Trap, a spoon or a soft plastic shrimptail under the birds or worked across a seagrass bed. You are mimicking a baitfish moving at a normal rate of speed.

Reds and specks are designed to respond to this kind of action because they are chase and corral predators. They by schooling will literally corral and attack their prey and even single fish use speed to overcome prey like a pack of wolves. I consider reds and specks to be our bay system's wolf packs.

Flounder however are more like mountain lions. They can be fast at short distances but rely on stealth to get their meals. Mountain lions wait in trees over game trails or hide in the bushes along the edges of forests and fields where deer and other prey come by and then when the prey suspects nothing, the lion lashes out and makes the kill.

Flounder are very much the same. While they can and sometimes do chase prey for short distances, the overwhelming majority of the time, they are camouflaged on the bottom waiting for the tides to bring it to them.

How does this apply to the way you work lures?

Instead of burning a jig through an area as if it were a mullet running from a school of specks, crawl it along the bottom slowly, stop it a few seconds and start again so you can allow the flounder to be an ambush predator and react to behavior it is genetically programmed to do.

And since we've been talking so much about hookset on flounder and the need for a tough rod here are a couple of videos that show me going to the extreme and using an actual pool cue. If I can catch them on this, then you can with a super stiff rod. These videos are courtesy of Texas Fish & Game and will only be up on this site and then available at fishgame.com.

Click here for part 1.

Click here for part 2

God bless and always dream BIG!

Chester Moore