Collection: Flounder Tackle

Jig heads, soft plastics and light weight for flounder.

Flounder are an ambush fish that lie flat on sand or mud waiting for something to swim past their face. That single fact dictates everything about how you catch them: your bait has to be on the bottom, and it has to move slowly enough to be worth ambushing.

Dragging is the technique. A paddle tail on a sweeper jig head, crawled along the bottom with long slow pulls and frequent pauses. The swept head profile keeps the bait tracking level and skimming the sand instead of nosing in, which is exactly right here.

The bite is not a bite. It feels like you have hooked a plastic bag or dragged into weed — a mushy weight rather than a thump. When that happens, pause. A flounder grabs a bait crossways and needs a few seconds to turn it before you lift.

Look for sand next to structure: channel edges, inlet mouths, the down-current side of a bar, and around dock pilings on a sand bottom.

Fall is the best fishing, when flounder stage in the inlets before moving offshore.