Humorous flounder tale

[Blindcasting]

With all the talk of flounder, I thought I'd pass on a funny sequence of events I had with a flounder the first year I had my kayak.

I was fishing the flats behind Fish Pass (Corpus Bay). I found this line where the bottom went from soft mud to grass/firm and had gotten out to wade it, tying the yak to my belt. In one area I kept getting bite after bite on a Gambler. Probably got a bite on a dozen casts in a row, with half of those coming back sans the tail. Finally I slowed the retrieve way, way down and hooked something. It didn't put up much of a fight, but it felt pretty heavy. I figured I'd snagged a ray until I finally pulled it to the surface.

It was a really, really big flounder. He was barely hooked in the side of the mouth, and the first thing that went through my mind was that there was no way I was going to land him. I tried to grip him a couple of times, but they just don't have handles on them. I decided to get my net from the crate at the back of the yak. I pulled the yak over to me and proceeded to pull it past me when I realized the line I'd tied to the front of the yak was not long enough for me to reach something at the back of the yak.

All this time the flounder was still thrashing around. After a couple more unsuccessful attempts at gripping it, I decided the best action would be to use the rod and swing the fish into the kayak. Surpringly this worked. Not surprisingly (in hindsight) as soon as it hit the bottom of the yak, it started flopping around like mad, and soon found itself back in the water.

That worked so well I decided to try it again, but this time I'd put something on top of the fish so it couldn't flop around. Fish flung back into the yak, same result - except this time I put my lifejacket on top of him. I guess a lifejacket is no match for a big flounder because it took about 2 seconds for him to knock it off and get himself back in the water again.

Still not able to come up with a better plan, I decided to try it again. Same successful attempt to swing him into the boat and same reaction when he hit the bottom of the yak....but this time when I put the lifejacket on him, I also leaned on the lifejacket, basically pinning him to the bottom of the boat. Good thing too, because when I finally got my stringer off my belt, untangled it (with one hand, the other still pressing on the lifejacket) and put the pin in its mouth I realized that the hook had come free during that last swing into the boat. I can rememer leaning on that jacket with the flopping flounder under me and thinking "I sure am glad no one is around to see this". Of course everytime I've ever thought that in my life I've turned around and someone was there. This case was no different...a couple of guys in a boat were about 50 yards away and had watched the whole thing. When they saw that I'd seen them, they had a good laugh and gave me a big thumbs up.

It was a comedey of errors, but that was one tasty fish.

Lessons learned: keep enough line between you and the yak so you can reach every inch of the boat, and always keep something on you to help land a difficult fish.

[Mercy]

lol....great story Trey! Wish I could have seen that....lol

[chasin_tails]

Don't forget about Joe and that monster flouder out by mud island, definitely a top 5 in the Star tournament (We'll never know).

[Blindcasting]

Chasin - those two stories pushed me to finally buy a Rapala Lock N Weigh yesterday.

[Newt]

The first fish I caught in my Tarpon was a Flounder. He was a no handles flounder. I hadn't brought a net. Unless someone else has caught him, he's still swimming around out there. Now I bring a net. And I am thinking about the Boga Grip.

[GoinCoastal]

Hey Trey... you'll like that Rapala. They work very well.