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How to catch Flounder
Flounder feed in 54–82°F water and bite best at 60–75°F. Fish Scouter's season calendar follows them in 15 waters; in October they are at their peak in The Panhandle, The Big Bend & Nature Coast, Tampa Bay & Sarasota and 11 more.
About
The Gulf flounder: flat, both eyes up, buried in the sand at a drop-off waiting for something to swim by. Runs out through the passes and inlets in the fall to spawn offshore.
How to fish it
Drag it on the bottom along a sand edge — the down-current side of a pass, a creek mouth, a dock's drop. Give them a three-count on the bite before you set.
What it eats
Live bait for it
Mud minnows (killifish)Lip-hooked on a jig head or a 1/0 hook dragged along the bottom — the flounder bait.
Finger mulletLip-hooked on a 2/0 to 4/0 circle hook and free-lined, or on a fish-finder rig in the surf. Cut mullet on the bottom for redfish and drum.
Live shrimpUnder a popping cork or free-lined, hooked under the horn on a #1 to 2/0 circle hook; on a jig head for the bottom. The universal inshore bait.
PinfishHooked through the back ahead of the dorsal on a 2/0 to 4/0 circle hook; the small ones free-lined, the big ones on a fish-finder rig.What to fish it with
the sizes that fish itThe rule
checked September 2026Minimum 14" total length, 5 per person; closed statewide October 15 through November 30.
The current rule →Where it is, month by month
The southern and Gulf flounder spend spring and summer in the bays, buried at drop-offs and creek mouths. In fall they make a run for the sea: from mid-October to mid-November, as the water cools, they pour out through the passes and inlets — sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once behind a strong cold front — to spawn offshore in big aggregations in 50 to 200 feet of water, peaking from December into February. That outgoing run is the best flounder fishing of the year, and several Gulf states close harvest during it. In late winter and spring the females come back into the estuaries and the cycle starts over. Drag a mud minnow or a bucktail along the sand edge on the outgoing.