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Flounder are ugly fish; there is no question about it. They are flat, mottled, and the big ones are referred to as "saddle blankets." They have bug eyes — both of which are on the same side of their head — and they have teeth like a hack saw. They are not easy to catch on a rod and reel and when you do hook one, they more or less just drag back to the boat, they really don’t fight that hard to get away.
Yet, each year at exactly this time, thousands of coastal anglers pack their bags, cash in some of their vacation days and set off for the annual flounder migration. November is considered to best time of year to land the ugly, but enormously delicious flounder. Broiled and stuffed with a crab dressing, flounder is suddenly transformed from a mud-sucking bottom fish to greatly admired table fare. It is right now, the day after Halloween, that the flat fish generally begin their massive migration from the shallows of the coastal bays to deeper water to spawn. Fishermen line the shores and the jetties, shoulder to shoulder, hoping to interrupt the flounder’s travel plans. But not this year. The migration is taking place; but the fishing will be drastically diminished. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has come up with new regulations for this season and beginning today, the daily limit of five flounder has been reduced to just two — hardly worth giving up a week’s vacation. And the two-fish limit applies only to rod and reel fishermen. The giggers — the ones who slink into the shallow waters at night with flat-bottom boats and giant spotlights — are shut out all together. There can be no flounder gigging during the month of November. All along the Texas Coast — from Sabine Lake to Port Isabel — the affect of the new regulations can easily be noticed. The flounder boats normally seen sitting along the roadside with signs for guided trips have been moved back to the garages. There aren’t any newspaper ads for flounder guides; no one is going to pay hundreds of dollars to pick up a couple fish. Interestingly enough, though, I found almost no griping about the new regulations. At early morning coffee shop gatherings all along the coastal bend, near Corpus Christi, the local fishermen seem to understand the need to slow down the flounder harvest. Most of the flounder guides I talked with will simply stash their flounder boats for the month, and pull out the bay boats for the other fish in the Texas inshore triad — speckled trout and redfish. On Dec. 1, the new regulations will end and flounder fishing will return to the normal five-fish limit and gigging can be resumed. Most of fishermen agree that the one-month hiatus isn’t much of a price to pay if it will help replenish the flounder population. TPWD says it will. The TPWD Coastal Fisheries Division says the "relative abundance of flounder has fallen by about 50 percent since the early 1980s, so that flounder populations are now about half what they once were." It is true that anglers reported an increase in the flounder population over the last couple of years, but department biologists are certain that it is simply a short-term increase and it can’t continue. In a release from the fisheries division, biologists say that by allowing more fish to spawn, more hatchlings will return to the bays and flounder will become more abundant for anglers. The news release goes on to say that "because of the relatively short, six-year life span of flounder, within two years anglers will begin to see a noticeable increase in flounder abundance." Projections are that the new regulations will increase the spawning stock by as much as 80 percent over six years with most of that increase taking place in the first several years. That should quickly bring back the vacationers; the hard core flounder fishermen who cast their nets for bait in the darkness of dawn, and search out the flounder until the black of night. And in between, they pay for hotels, camp sites, fuel and restaurants. In short, flounder are good for the coastal economy.
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