How to gig a flounder for a delicious evening feast

Hmmm. Now, what do I fix for dinner?

Should it be fresh flounder stuffed with shrimp, fresh fried trout fillet’s served with a steaming plate of grits and hush-puppies or a juicy and tender venison roast? Decisions, decisions, but the good thing is that whatever’s not cooked-up for this meal will be used for the next few dinners. Nothing helps the cook better than having menu’s planned in advance.

October starts the good season for all of this fare. The water is cooler, making trout fishing better, and clearer, making flounder easier to spot on the rivers bottom when gigging for them at night. Also, deer season, which began Aug. 15, really gets rolling now with acorns falling that bring the deer out to feed. November being the peak season for big bucks in search of a mate.

The flounder is a salt-water fish belonging to the flat fish family. They are found on the sandy, muddy bottoms of creeks along the river edge. It has a flattened body with both eyes on the same side of the head. The upper side of its body adapts to the color of the bottom of water where the fish settles, with the underside remaining white. When the flounder is first hatched, it looks like a typical fish but as it grows, the eyes on its lower side moves gradually around to the upper side of its head.

Gigging at night for flounder can be relaxing and fun for the adventurous who equips his boat for it. But of course, it’s always less work for the person who’s invited to go along for the experience. Going in the river at night is not for the faint-of-heart because if something were to happen to the captain of the boat, you’d be as lost as a ‘biddy-in-high-weeds.’ Take it from me. If you’ve had to find your way back to the boat landing in the dark, you know how easy it is to get turned around in a skinny-minute.

For a novice fisherman, the river can appear a little eerie. But it can also be very soothing with the quietness of total darkness engulfing you and only the sound of soft laps of water breaking near the water’s edge. And there’s the light on the bow of the boat lighting the water near the shore line where you look to spot a flounder.

Beginners might have to train their eye in terms of what to look for to be able to spot a flounder. But once you finally see one, it gets easier to catch sight of the next one. Flounder settle on the bottom and with a few flaps of their fins cover themselves with sand so that the only giveaway are their two eyes, poking up just above the sand and some white spots on their bodies that the light picks up.

Requiring a low tide, a good heavy duty gig head, a dependable high candlepower light source and relatively clear, calm water, a trip out for flounder can be a fruitful experience even though you might catch yourself wanting to take a cat-nap the next day.

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 10:01 AM with the headline "How to gig a flounder for a delicious evening feast."