Flounder catching made easy

ONLY IN TEXAS

They do it in Carolina also.

When I was young (5-10) me and my dad would walk through the shallows at Oregon Inlet and Ocracoke with an inflated bike intertube with a light in it and catch 7-10 fish in a couple hours. We used an actual harpoon he got from some antique shop. Watching this seems like cheating though... at least we anchored the boat and trudged through the grass and mud and earned our fish.

I understand now why it's illegal in VA!

just curiouse but why is it illegal in va. is there a shortage of them?

joey

Everything is illegal in Virginia.

It is legal in Alabama

We used coleman lanterns that instead of a glass globe, it had a huge reflector on one side with a carry handle.

We also have a Phenomenon down there called jubilee's. It is when all the marine life in the bay goes into very shallow water. It happens on a north east wind and a certain moon and water conditions.
Decaying plantlife in the bay removes enough oxygen for the marine life to almost become paralized in slallow water.

Usually only a few people take advantage of a jubilee. It will only last for a few hours. There is a network of people that live on the easternshore of Mobile Bay that contact each other in the middle of the night when one occurs.
I have seen 2 occur, once when i was 4 and my father filled a boat up with flounder. Again when I was a teen, we gigged about a dozen or so. It is a amazing site to see thousands of flounder, stingrays and crabs in only inches of water.
You can also fill a bucket up with shrimp using a small dip net, which is not much, we used to catch 200 pounds of shrimp a weekend using a 14ft john boat and a 16ft shrimp trawl.

here is a site explaining a jubilee so you dont think I crazy

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Jsa2d...ilee+fish&hl=en

Seeing people gigging flounder like that site from texas might seem foriegn to most people, I was shocked when I moved to VA Bch and needed a rule book to find out what is allowed while playing at the beach.

the video reminded me of my early school days back in corpus and portland. we use to use a flashlight and gig and walk along the shoreline for the flounder. back then there were no regs on flounders. those were the days, we built our own shrimp nets. three sticks and some mesh and you were good to go. i now live in va. but my heart is still in tx. a trip to the point in nc for some good fishing and fun at the beach is the close but don't hold a candle to the padre national seashore. just last year i took the 4x4 down to tx. at the entry point the ranger passed me the clip board to sign in and i was #8 on the list to enter, may not sound like much but the beach is 63 miles long from the check in to the mansfield jetty. if you want some beach to yourself your in the right spot. nobody for miles around. you can cast to specs. from the top of the first bar or fish the gut between the bar and the shore for flounder. at night you can gig for flounder or cast to reds in the second gut. what a blast. and how about shark fishing, you've haven't seen diehards till you watch the guys fish for tigers in the surf. i'm talking fighting chairs mounted in the back of a f150 and fighting the shark one guy in the chair and the other driving the truck. a fellow landed one over 900 lbs on the beach. but most fall between 200 and 400 lbs. just take into consideration that most places you travel to have different ways of fishing. the videos make it look easy to the point of poking fun, but it's not. it takes alot of practice to become accurate with a gig. i'll bet those flounder taste the same hook or gig.

The hardest part is finding the flounder in the sand, I have stepped on more than I have gigged. And then there are the jelly fish.

We had no regulations on flounder either. We had regulations on Shrimp I think it was 100 pounds for recreational shrimping and unlimited for commercial. We always paid the extra for the commercial so we could dehead them in the boat. The weight was for shrimp with the heads on, so if you were recreational shrimper you had to keep the heads on.

Also we have times when the mullet spawn that they get together in big schools. You can see thousands of mullet heads on the surface of the water. At night if you shine a light on them they all jump. So if you run a boat while shinning a light in the water in front of the boat as you run up on a school, they will literally jump in your boat. Dont drive too fast though.

We caught mullet in cast nets for fun as kids, but never kept them, not much for eating. We never ate croaker either.

The only crabs we ever kept were softshells.

most of the shimp i drug for, i used as live bait for specs and reds. what we didn't use we took home to eat. as far as mullet, we used the finger mullet for live bait. i didn't like cut mullet because it seemed to catch mostly hardheads. for those in the area who don't know, a hardhead is saltwater catfish found in the gulf. they have 3 spikes attached to their fins that can really leave a prolonged sting.

man you mean im moving to va for nothing i cant even gig flounder and you have hardheads i thought i would be getting away from them. can anyone point me in the right direction for fishing regs. i dont really like hunting around for it. thanks


joey

http://www.mrc.state.va.us/swrecfishingrules.htm

I got a small hard head catfish right in the joint of my thumb, man did it hurt. They were a pain, always getting on your hook.

thanks 71whaler i just happen to see another thread after i wrote that where that link was posted. ive got some studying to do everything on there is considerably different from florida.


joey

According to MRC it is legal, is there some other law that makes giging flounder in shallow water along the coast illegal?



http://www.mrc.state.va.us/spearfishing.pdf

Dont Quote me on this but I think Gigging Flounder after dark with spot lights is the illegal part. Thats how they do it in NC.The bad part about gigging is if you gig one that is under the size limit what do you do then?let it go to the Crabs or risk getting nailed by the warden.I have Speared them wreck diving at 100 feet and had no problems with anyone wearing a badge.

Yeah pretty much you see 2 eye's, not the outline of the flounder. If you gig a 12 incher you are illegal. I do not believe we had size limits for flounder in "LA", I know we ate many flounder that were under 12 inches.

Yeah that link I posted specifically is for spearfishing, it includes giging, but it does not say anything about time of day or location.

Im not looking to go giging flounder, so ill let this post be.

I do have new dive gear and 2 spear guns that are ready to go, so look for my post on the new dive/spear forum.

I havent been in a few years but I have all the gear.I need to get my tanks hydro`d and a larger wet suite since I gained 30lbs.I will probably have my regulator rebuilt and test my B.C. in the pool before I go again.The lee side of the 2nd and 3rd islands are good places to warm up,for your 1st few Dives of the Year.