Tight lines

Flounder gigging basics

Matt Winter

Monday, August 4, 2008

Matt Winter
Tideline Magazine

Capt. Darrell Graham is a gigging machine.

The Lowcountry charter captain has been sticking fish for a long time, and he has the stories to back it up.

His biggest flounder? A whopping 13 pounds and 32½ inches in length. His best trip ever? Try 170 fish. ...Of course, this was before the establishment of current limits of 20 fish per person, up to 40 fish per boat.

Graham recently shared some gigging tips during a seminar at Haddrell’s Point Tackle and Supply in Mount Pleasant:

What you’ll need

Gigging flounder generally involves poling or motoring a flatbottom boat along the banks of saltwater creeks and rivers at night. Boats are rigged with lights pointing into the water, and anglers stand on the bow and stern with long poles tipped with a forked spearhead called a gig.

Graham typically uses a fiveprong, No. 8 gig head. Though you can use store-bought bamboo or aluminum poles, Graham makes his own poles from 1¼ -inch wooden dowels bought from a hardware store. He leaves the poles long — up to 15 feet. “Kind of like the Yellow Pages,” he said. “You want to reach out and touch them.”

Over the decades, lights for flounder gigging have evolved from hand-held lanterns to workshop pan-lights powered by deep-cycle marine batteries. Graham has taken it a step further, and now uses a 1,000-watt Honda generator on board to power two 500-watt halogen lights, one in the front of the boat and one in the back. The lights are mounted on poles that fit into rod holders.

When to go

The best nights to gig are those with a low tide about 3 a.m., with no wind and no moon. If the tide is low at 3 a.m., Graham and his gigging partners will start about midnight and gig the outgoing and incoming tides “until you run out of night.”

Though a downpour can muddy the water and hurt visibility, rain is not necessarily a deal-killer, especially if you’re gigging an area close to the ocean. The tides, he said, will wash out muddy water fairly quickly.

The best time of year is summer through late October. When the water hits 75 degrees, the flounder start pushing offshore, where they spend the winter.

Where to go

Graham usually goes gigging in areas along the Intracoastal Waterway and inside a number of inlets east of the Cooper.

Ideal banks include a mix of live oysters and soft bottom, either sand or pluff mud.

Flounder can be found incredibly shallow, even in water just 3 inches deep. “Last year we were gigging some that had their backs actually out of the water,” he said.

Graham advises anglers to cover as much ground as possible. He will usually move his boat slowly along the bank using either a trolling motor or the boat’s main motor at idle. With an experienced gigger at the front to keep the bow away from oyster bars and other structures, you can move quickly up a bank. If you spot a fish but fly past it, “circle back around. He’ll be right there,” Graham said.

What to look for

Flounder are masters of camouflage, and often will bury themselves under a thin layer of sand or mud. This makes them very hard for a novice to spot.

Though their eyes often give flounder away, Graham said a better method involves training yourself to “look for the whole fish,” or its general outline, which is a lot like the spade symbol in a deck of cards.

Try to gig the fish right behind the head; this protects much of the meat and often kills the fish quickly, making it easier to swing up into the boat and off the gig.

And if you’re not quite sure whether that big oval shape is just a pile of mud or a door-matsized flounder? Graham’s advice is simple: “Anything that doesn’t look right, stick it.”

To book a trip with Fish Sticker Charters, contact Capt.Graham at 843-270-6667.

Tight lines

Flounder gigging basics

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