9/6/07
Flounder gigging means flounder fun at the coast
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

With gigging poles in hand and lights in position, Mike Cox, rear, shows Jacki Madewell how to land her quarry.

Flounder gigging isn’t the best where there’s a full moon, based on information from all my buddies at the coast. There simply seems to be fewer flounder available. On past trips this has proven to be the case. If one thing’s for certain – it’s a good time to go flounder gigging.

My wife Jacki and I had the opportunity to go with my buddy Mike Cox on a full moon night a couple weeks ago. To everyone’s surprise, there were quite a few flounder in the shallows that night.

“The good news is that the tide is low about midnight,” Mike said. “But the bad news is that the tide is low about midnight.”

Seeing our puzzled look, he added the rest of the information.

“With a low tide at that time, it means we can be on the water at dark and be able to start gigging almost immediately,” he said. “We won’t have to stay up all night to see if we’re going to find a few flounder. However it also means, especially on a Friday evening, that we’ll have a lot of company. This is a perfect opportunity for everyone to go gigging. Hopefully, the full moon will scare some of the other giggers away.”

The full moon did not scare anyone away, but fortunately, Mike knows the waters well and had some out-of-the-way holes that are seldom hit by others.

A couple of his favorite banks had giggers already on them, but after a couple of stops, we started seeing flounder on a regular basis.

Actually, we gigged them on a much more frequent basis than Cox had planned on.

That was certainly fine with Jacki and me. It was a very good night.

Flounder gigging is sometimes passed over or not considered as a potential method of catching fish for saltwater anglers. It is actually an extremely effective way to load up on some of the best tasting seafood along the South Carolina coast.

Flounder are shallow water feeders, especially at night. The fish will move very shallow near the water’s edge, often in mere inches of water and settle in on the bottom to ambush their forage as it swims by.

Simply described, all you do is rig lights on your boat and pole along and gig the flounder when you spot them. Perhaps a bit oversimplified, but the process is not difficult.

In addition to being fun and a great way to beat the summer heat, you really get to enjoy the bounty of our natural resources along our coast.

Flounder are among my favorite tasting fish and are great any way you want to prepare them. Big ones can even be cooked on the grill for a really special treat.

The keys to flounder gigging success are easy, but crucial.

First you must have a good lighting system.

Mike has a big generator and uses two powerful lights. You can get by with batteries and 100 watt, 12-volt bulbs, but it is more difficult to see the fish. Light is measured in lumens and the more you’ve got working for you, the better you can see. You can get by with smaller lights, but more is often better if you are serious about the sport. It allows you to see the bottom more clearly and further out.

The gigs can be bought or homemade. Most are usually about 10-foot long and can be made simply from a closet rod, although both aluminum and fiberglass poles are good too. One commercial gig is the B&M model which is made of carbon steel. The advantage is it stays very sharp and has very aggressive barbs, which help hold the fish. The downside is that it will rust in continued saltwater use.

Sea Striker makes a stainless gig and while it won’t rust, it has less aggressive barbs. With continued use of poling the boat in the sand and shells, the stainless steel points will become blunted.

Mike makes his own gigs and they’re the best I’ve seen or used. He suggests looking for flounder on shell banks and sand, mud or mixed sand and shell bottoms. The fish will sometimes get into inches of water, especially on a rising tide, and they will generally face into the current. If it’s deep enough to float your boat, it is probably deep enough to gig a flounder.

Key your efforts on seeing fish of course, but if there are fresh flounder beds or simple imprints in the sand or bottom that have the form of a flounder, work that particular area hard.

Also, forage is crucial. Flounder will not be there unless they have something to eat.

Mike recommends you gig the fish in the head because that’s the only real skeletal structure in the fish and the best place to hold the fish on the gig while you lift it out of the water.

A key is to not touch them with the gig. They will likely stay right there while you position the boat. Sometimes we saw one just as we were past it and if we didn’t make too much noise, we could move the boat back and still gig the fish.

The size limit on flounder is 14 inches minimum length (a recent size increase). All that’s required to gig flounder is a saltwater fishing license.

The time to get flounder is here and a good nighttime trip can help you beat the summer heat.