flounder

Marie with an unexpected dinner guest. The flounder greedily ate a Z-Man Diezel Minnowz cast near an oyster mound!

As we near the end of this segment of snook season, I’m happy to report the bite is still good! The top-water bite is steady for snook, jacks and an occasional gator trout in the backwater jungles north of town.

Most mornings the nod goes to walking plugs, especially when the surface is calm or nearly so. I’m typically tossing Tsunami walkers or Super Spook Jrs. If the water is a bit choppy at least one rod will be throwing a Z-Man Pop Shadz. The Pop Shadz is also my go-to surface plug for any angler who has difficulty “walking the dog” even on placid waters.

Marie and Joe joined me for a backwater trip recently. Once they knocked the dust off their rusty casting skills we settled in on the fishing part of the trip. Too many exciting blow-ups yielded no bent rods as is often the case with top-water fishing.

Eventually, success was had and Marie was well rewarded with a beautiful jungle snook and a fat flounder. Switching to a sub-surface lure helped greatly with getting the hook into a few lips this particular morning and a Z-Man four inch Diezel Minnowz rigged on a Z-Man Chinlockz hook was all she needed! The flounder was laid up near mangrove roots that butted up against a small mound of live oysters.

A few live oyster mounds remain in our area and even though I would not eat them, you can bet I’ll fish around them whenever I get the chance!