Also known as Fluke, Flatfish, Northern Flounder. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Summer Flounder — Mid-Atlantic / NE bottom ambusher — drift-and-bounce game. Also called Fluke, Flatfish, Northern Flounder.
Summer flounder (fluke) chase bait actively — unlike winter flounder which sit and ambush, fluke will swim 6 m off the bottom to take a moving bucktail. The classic drift-fishing presentation along sand-to-mud transitions in 15–25 m of water moves a jig at the speed of a 1.5-knot drift, which is what triggers the take.
Summer Flounder is also known as: Fluke, Flatfish, Northern Flounder. Mid-Atlantic / NE bottom ambusher — drift-and-bounce game.
Regional names can confuse anglers and cause misidentification. The table of common names below covers the most-used alternatives across Australia, New Zealand and the US:
Key to correct identification: check the regulations-authority species sheet for your state or territory before keeping any fish — minimum legal sizes, bag limits and identification guides are published by each fisheries department and are the authoritative source.
Hero spots in our coverage where Summer Flounder is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Drift sandy bottoms in 20–80 ft with the lightest jig that maintains bottom contact in the current — fluke feed up off the bottom by lifting and striking. Bounce the jig in 1–2 ft hops, pause on the bottom for 2-3 seconds, repeat. When you feel the take, drop the rod tip and feed line for a 2-3 count before setting the hook — fluke are notorious for grabbing and dropping. Squid + spearing combo on a teaser rig dropped down with a bucktail underneath is the textbook bait setup.
Moving tide is critical for fluke — they feed actively on drift in a current. Slack tide kills the bite. The middle two-thirds of the tide (whether incoming or outgoing) when current is strongest produces best. Slow drifts in light current = drift socks or motoring slowly to maintain bottom contact.
Fluke are weakly moon-dependent. Spring tides on new and full moons produce stronger currents which generally help drift fishing. Outside that, water temp (60–70°F is prime) and finding the right bottom structure matters more.
Highly regulated and changes annually. NY: typically 19–20" minimum, 3 per person; NJ: 18", 3 per person; CT: 19", 4 per person — but verify current state rules every year. Fluke regulations are set through ASMFC and individual states; small variations matter at the dock.
From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-18.
Olli-Mikael Vaittinen has fished his whole life. Fifteen years of fly fishing, guiding seasons on Norway's Lakselva — his favourite Atlantic salmon river — and a blue marlin landed in Vava'u, Tonga. Founder of Fishare — the app that puts the data behind the decisions every angler makes on the water.
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