The weekend wasn't looking very promising. The weather man was predicting horrible weather all weekend. Luckily he was wrong again and except for a few showers in the morning it was perfect fishing weather. We called Capt. Joe Wool on Saturday and lined up a Flounder trip for Sunday. Joe has a 25' Grady White Trophy and runs charters out of Lynnhaven Inlet. More information is available on Joe Wool on our partners page. All of us arrived at Joe's house at six am and loaded the gear for a day of Flounder fishing.

My rod and reel of choice for fishing Flounder is an Ambassedeur Abu-Garcia 5600 series reel and the Shakespeare BWC six foot Ugly Stick rod. I prefer to fish with this combo because you can have fun with small fish and still be able to handle a big fish I had 5 dozen jumbo Gudgeons and some squid to start off. The trick is to hook the Gudgeon through the lips and then add a small strip of squid about 3" long onto your hook as well. As we headed down Long Creek I re-tied old Flounder rigs from the last trip that we went on. I always like to have a new leader to start the day. In my opinion there is nothing worse than losing the first fish of the day because your leader was old and chewed up. As always we were using Gamakatsu hooks on our Flounder Rigs. Once we got out in the inlet it was only a short run to the Cape Henry wreck which is only about 6 miles away.

On the first drop I had a huge fish hooked up and fought it for only 10 or 15 seconds before it got off. It was disappointing to lose our first hook up but everyone was starting to get excited about the rest of the day.The next few drifts produced nothing except one small Flounder and half a dozen hangs. The fish seemed to be hanging right over the wreck so after losing a few rigs we reeled in the lines and got ready to move. We all talked it over and decided to head to the Chesapeake Channel. We started at the third set of buoys below the Third Island and all of us landed nice size Flounder on the first drift. Capt. Joe suggested we keep going until we passed the second set of buoys before we pull back up.

That turned out to be the best advice of the day. Just as the Miss Kellen got in front of the second set of buoys Glenn had a nice fish on, which ended up being a 22" Flounder. The 22" Flounder was caught on a combination of Flounder Belly and Squid. We had finally found the Flukesters! Then all of sudden Scott hooked into a monster. The fight went on for about 10 minutes and just as we got a glimpse of the fish it took a final dive and broke the line. But before it did we got a good look at it and it was one of the biggest Flounder any of us had ever seen. Even though we never landed the fish I know Scott will remember the battle for years to come. I'm just glad he got to see and feel what it's like to fight a trophy class Flounder. As the morning went on the Flounder got fewer and farther between. But large Croaker and small Taylor Blues were there to pick up the slack. All in all it was a very good fishing trip, it didn't take us long to find the honey hole and it was steady action all morning. You can't ask for anymore than that. Well this is the Fluketamer signing off, and wishing you the best of luck on your next adventure.
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