Thread: Flounder in the Firth

In the early hours of the morning way before daylight we have been awakened by the barking of our old lab bitch.
Her pup doesn't bark at anything or anybody, she will never make a watch dog.

It is never that "I have a burglar in sight sneaking through the bushes" type of bark, but more a "I dont know what is going on but you better pay attention type bark.

She has got better hearing than I have and it turns that on these clear calm mornings the Commercial flounder men voices are carrying across the water and that is what she has been hearing.
Unable to go back to sleep I hoist my sorry ass out on to the veranda with the bino's and and wait for daylight and watch these guys pull their net. From the evidence it seems that a great flounder run began about the 20th of april and continues right up until the present. In the six years living here I have never seen such a long or such a prolific run of fish for this time of the year.

These guys know their game alright I watch them hauling their nets right in our bay about 200 metres from my windows. Some mornings they seem to have a nice fish about every 2 or 3 metres along their 1000 metre net (estimated)


I get worried that they are going to clean the place out so most mornings its down to the dingy ( I keep it down on the beach) and its a row to the sunshine, which at this hour is still far from touching our beach. I have the maximum legal net for private use, which is 60 metres long,this I piss around with and set it in a gap where I figure the fish might be if they have successfully avoided being swept up by the bigger nets It looks puny compared with the opposition nets which stretch so far the end is out of sight from dingy level. But never mind I have been averaging about 10 flounder per day and a good size they are to. Great by-catches as well, there is always 3 or 4 good snapper and the same of good sized Kahawai. A few days back I had 12 snapper in the net. I let much of the by-catch go.

I have given so many fish away lately even the rubbish truck driver got a big kahawai this afternoon, he went away grinning from ear to ear. I hope his boss doesnt accuse him of robbing the trash sacks. The wife has begun taking them to work and giving them away. It is amazing how few people eat fresh fish nowadays, they just cant afford it, it seems. Meanwhile our fridge and freezer is bulging at the seams with fish, venison, and ducks.
The good thing about the flounder is I dont have to fillet them for everybody. It seems to me that few people can fillet a fish in this day and age. even including males.

I guess the run will soon be over and we will have to wait until the first of the runs begin again in september when the fish begin running again into the Firth to spawn.

Its been a great year for all types of fishing in the Firth, even for sharks. I caught a small thresher in the net this morning. One of many this year. Hammerheads have been a nuisance as well. He was about a mere long in the body and nearly as much again in his tail. The bloody thing flung about two buckets of seawater over me with its tail while I was trying to slap the dog back out of the way, she had decided to take part in the battle too. She lays onto it by the tail and hangs on like it was a pig or something. She will have us all in the drink one of these days. When I managed to roll it out of the net after it had bit a damned great hole in it the malevolent creature decided to circle the boat while I hung onto the lab who was threatening to throw herself over the side and take up the battle once again. I guess it was just trying to get its bearings back once again after being half drowned in the net

I feel really guilty at times, when I think about it, my two labs eat more fresh fish in a week than many families would see all year.

Living the dream there Scribe If the freezer is bulging why not leave the net at home and take the rod?

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Living the dream there Scribe If the freezer is bulging why not leave the net at home and take the rod?

Good Morning "Vietnam" remember that film that Robin Williams starred in. Mad as a hatter he was
We never freeze fish. We made the promise when we moved here that we would never freeze another fish.
I just had a bit of an empty out of the freezer to make some space. The recipe for good salami. The leg of a rank stag...preferably taken in the roar. I leg of fat wild pork, 3kg of mutton mince and roughly the same amount of assorted duck, pheasant, swan, goose, peacock and pheasant breasts. So we will now see how the local butcher goes with it, hes never made salami before but last month he made the best sausages we ever ate out of the recipe above

Are your referring to catching flounder on the rod. Now that has got to be fun but I havnt done it yet. Every time I get the urge to go out and try it I cant find any worms. Its usually fine hot weather at the time and the earthworm population has disappeared somewhere or other.

As for rod fishing other species, I have a mate with a boat and we visit the mussel farm for a fish about once a week. There is only about one month of the year that we dont catch as many good fish as we need and thats (july) usually.

Sore hands from filleting everyone fish for them is the problem around here. I smoke a lot of these fish for the folk in the bay.

Flounder on a rod would be a chalenge for sure. Iv only ever caught two on a rod but that has been targeting Gurnard and just a fluke.
Na I was referring to Snapper and Kahawai.
It always feels good to give away wild food to people who want it. Except when you ask them a year later "how was that venison" about 15 Kilos and get the "oh we haven't tried any yet". They wont be getting any more!


Oh yea the movie, one of his better ones

Last night the fish were on the move. For reasons way beyond our ken and known only to themselves.

This morning the water was like glass at high tide. The flounder fleet were out there before daylight as they have been for days now working over their nets.

At nine oclock just before high tide, I could count 6 kahawai work ups out there on the Firth. One of them was moving rapidly into the bay where I had left the flounder net set overnight. Kahawai workups are bad news as far as I am concerned when you are out floundering. So it was a race to get out there and get the net out of the water before they arrived.

When these fish start gilling themselves in big numbers in your net you havnt a lot of choice. You either haul the net over the side of the boat in great haste and have 20 kahawai making the biggest tangle you ever saw of your net...Or you pick up the net, binning it carefully and picking the fish out as you go. The trouble with the second method is, the net as you work your way along it picking out the fish, it is still catching furiously ahead of you and you are likely to end up with 50 or more fish to untangle and return to the sea by the time you get to the end of it.

The bottom dwellers (flounder) were obviously on the move last night as well as there were 25 of them in the net this morning.