Fluke sometimes haunt my dreams. Yesterday, I awoke from a dream of lifting (by hand) seven sluggish “doormats” from crystal clear waters in a slow river. I’m not going to try to figure that one out. I don’t think that “dream interpreters” know what a "fluke" is anyway. I think I know where the dream came from though.
The season and limits for Summer Flounder change from time to time in Rhode Island. This fact is not as strange as the appearance and habits of the fish itself. The larvae hatch with eyes on both sides of their head. The right eye “drifts” over to the left side as the fish slowly sinks closer to the bottom in the first days of its life. The fish spends the rest of its life lying on its right side, camoflauged in the sandy bottom, lying in wait for squid, minnows, crabs and anything else unlucky enough to drift or crawl across its lightning-fast jaws, ringed by needle sharp teeth.
Growing up, my brothers and I didn’t like "fluking". “Bottom fishing” was considered boring as we focused on chasing blues, bass and bonita across the coast of Southern Rhode Island. The sluggish pace of fluking was left to older generation of my father and his friends. We couldn’t understand the allure of bouncing a squid-draped jig off of the bottom, only to catch a fish that felt like a perforated trash can lid as it rose from the depths.
As I got older, I started to come around to the joys of fluking. I don’t know exactly what started my fascination with them. Maybe it was the fact that they would occasionally rise off of the bottom of the breachway channel to take a fly or trolling lure. It could be that the quality of the flesh was so good that I recognized that the “tribe” I was helping to feed valued it above all, especially when a fillet was set
with tomato and lettuce
between two pieces of good, crunchy bread.
One event that I know has fueled my love of fluke fishing is the first time I ever “sight-fished” for them. It was early September and my father was spending Labor Day with my young family and I near the salt pond. The weather had been fair and the water was clear of the usual late August “storm gunk”. We took our small Whaler out to fish the incoming tide. From earlier success in the summer we had a bag of “fluke-bellies”, the white strips of skin and flesh taken from the underside filets. They’re far more durable than squid strips and the fluke don’t seem to mind the taste of their own kind. Key to our trip would be finding Mummichogs, fat little minnows that inhabit the marshes along the New England coast. We learned long ago from an old local of the existence of a “secret” mini-pond adjoining the salt pond. At the pond, we’d throw our minnow trap (baited with marsh mussel) in and wait and talk. After about 10 minutes the trap can gather about 30 or 40 “mummies” on a good day.
Once we gathered up the mummies we headed out to where the breachway meets the pond. For a while, my dad had preferred to fish in the pond for fluke rather than going out the breachway into the sound. He’d claimed to many skeptics in the neighborhood that the fishing inside was just as good as it was outside. I was one of the skeptics. He had a habit of announcing the arrival to his hook of an interested fish by saying “I feel ya’ knockin’” and usually closed the deal with a sharp pull back to set the hook. On this day, the tide started slowly and our first few attempts at a good drift were not great. Eventually the tide and a light breeze created a strong drift straight into the pond. The morning light and the gin-clear water combined to give a vivid view of the bottom as we drifted above it. The water runs from about 10 to 16 feet deep and, as we began to bump our bucktails along the sand, we could see what looked like tan shadows following in the path of our jigs. It took a few minutes (and a few “hits”) for us to realize that we were seeing numbers of fluke lining up behind our bucktails. After catching a few “shorts”, we had our first bigger “shadow” line up and take a mummichog. As the drift approached the shore, we ran back up to the head of it and repeated. Again, the bottom appeared to be a collection of moving tiles, attracted to and investigating our bucktails, then attacking the mummichogs. I honestly think that watching the fluke gather and attack was as much fun as boating the fish.
After three hours and countless drifts, the tide began to die. We’d tallied nearly 40 fish with 6 over 18”. It was an extraordinary morning that I haven’t been able to repeat since. I’ve “sight-fished” again with my sons in the pond and with my brother-in-law in 5 feet of water off of the Vineyard and Monomoy. I hope to find those perfect sight-fishing conditions in real life again soon. Until then, dreams will have to do.
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