As Ty Hibbs and I ventured away from the Island Road weir and headed back to the weir on the western levee of the impoundment, he kept pointing out spots he thought would hold flounder.
Had we not been making a beeline to the second weir, Hibbs said we would have stopped and fished some of those spots.
The more spots he pointed out, the more I began to realize what they all had in common.
Each spot had what looked like a small, bare, dirt bluff bank sticking out of the water.
“Flounder like to get on those bare mud ledges right out from those bluff-looking spots,” Hibbs said as we pulled up to the second weir.
Hibbs pointed toward the nearby banks close to the weir, and it all looked like the same kinds of spots he had just pointed out.
“Now you know why I like this weir better than the one we just left,” he said. “That one’s good, but it just doesn’t scream flounder to me when I look at it.
“This one? This one has all these mud flats surrounding it where flounder can pull up and feed.”
The more Hibbs discussed the bluff banks, the more I began replaying just about every spot I had ever caught a lot of flounder. The Calcasieu Ship Channel, the Rigolets in Slidell, the spillways at Venice — all have these same kinds of bare bluff banks.
“When water gets to moving around those kinds of banks, flounder will move up and feed if they are anywhere around,” Hibbs said. “And you’ll often find them stacked up so close that you can pound on them a while in one spot.”
