This fave flounder bait is in short supply along with different parts of the Jersey coast, including Delaware Bay, and with the full moon coming next Tuesday, well, it’s going to be a challenge, for sure as the killie behavior gets really funky during this period.
Winter Flounder Fishing in New Jersey
Before fluke season opens, anglers can warm up their flatfishing skills with winter flounder.
May 19, 2021
While the New Jersey winter flounder season opens on March 1, the fishing in the bays and rivers can be productive through May.
Rewind back to April 1998 in Shark River New Jersey. From the old Captain Bill’s Bait and Tackle in Neptune, a buddy and I rented a 14-foot boat with a 9.9-horsepower engine on the back and motored out into the Shark River channel about 10 minutes away, where we set the anchor and deployed chum pots filled with clam and mussel logs over the side. Two hours later, we had already landed 30 winter flounder to 4 pounds, throwing back the smaller ones. It was almost a joke. “We might as well go fish for winter flounder since the bass aren’t here yet.” Now, how we pine for flounder days like that again. The good news is that in the past decade or so, there have been some years of pretty good flounder fishing,