what depth of water are we fishing uh four to six feet four to six feet can't see them can't see them that's why there's no push pull that's the fact we don't need no push p in this is the first time in many many episodes I have not brought pushball but I knew I was fishing with you and every time we fish with Ed caver we fish deep and fast deep and [Music] fast there's always someone I can count on when I absolutely have to get a show done and that's got to be Jacksonville's Eddie
cabler the guy is amazing what a power fisherman and he understands the fishery there in [Music] Jacksonville in Northeast Florida one of the best scenarios or setups for targeting flounder is the St John's river itself because of the flow the current there and because of the structure there's so much industrial uh elements to the river itself they've got rip wrap they've got big docks perfect places that are Ambush spots for big flounder few years ago we did an episode with Eddie cabler uh right there in Jacksonville once again and basically the the title of that
show was rocks and docks and that's his game that's his strong suit and when you're fishing in the St John's you've got to have that mentality that you're going to power fish the whole time and you're going to be using bigger heavier baits and you're going to get hung up from time to time but you are going to catch some big fish bull red fish big trout and in this case big flounder come on better F they fight so different than a you know like a red red drum or nice one nice fish see that
is a nice fish right there that is a nice fish and he got it too man just broke my spinner bait you slam that thing they're not as lazy as everybody says they are no they're not that's a beautiful fish that was a straight retrieve but that fish there would be plenty legal at 19 in Long a nice [Music] fish good job yeah he gave me a little wash down little bit of a wash down my friend there we go I like it when they jump yeah oh that's every bit of same size here bring
them in here nice really nice see where a porpus done grabbed him yeah you can see that too can't you look at the look at the backside wow yeah you can see the teeth and everything now these this is another one that's probably close to 19 in these flounder is this kind of typical that's about average size that's about average size so it's a typical flounder here beautiful fish great eating oh I know that great eating that that's why their numbers have to be protected beautiful I'm going to let him go over here so he
won't tell you know Sam Bob and the rest of them on the other side nice so what makes Eddie caver a good angler in this style of fishing well once you figure it out you start to understand when you're fishing with them that that bait has to be in close contact with the bottom without getting hung up but you're going to have to make it so that that bait kind of trules down bounces off a rock you lift it again bounces off the mud bottom lifts up again boun bounces off a rock to be able
to do that time it with the current understand the gear ratio on your reel lifting all these little tiny elements of the retrieve have to be in tune where you spend most of your time fishing way above the fish too high cuz you're trying to be conservative and not get hung up or you get hung up which those two options are terrible you'll never catch a fish but once you figure it out and you understand how to fish these fish you can really catch a lot of [Music] flower sh a be [Music] there's scattered rock
that comes off these Granite Boulders that are up here that are visible and they just lay in these washes behind them and just as whatever side the tide flipflops they just sit on that side exactly they face inside the current like into the current and just wait for that bait mullet shrimp whatever it may be and it's basically just a camouflaged ambush true Predator that's why it's important to stay tight to the bottom what do you think the biggest mistake most Anglers make not having enough weight fishing up above them yeah exactly you got to
keep it down but I like keeping it up you know 6 to 12 Ines off the bottom actually you know that way they can see a little bit further out my favorite way to Target flounder is power fishing I'm throwing spinner baits chatter baits grubs there's a lot of different ways of Target fer that's my preferred way to catch them fastpac you got him that guy small guy not bad I like I like your version of small when you have fast moving water and it's dark water you need that bait that has a lot of
contrast that bait that has a lot of thump and feel that's why we chose spinner baits and chatter baits or just the goat bait that cman goat so many of my clients and some of our fans reach out to us when we're using that bait why why are you using that bass bait in salt water and it's because it gets noticed uh it can be felt you expand your Strike Zone if you will by using the goat and in this scenario where we were fishing anywhere from from 4 to 6 ft of water in many
cases sometimes even deeper it was really necessary to have a big thumping bait like the goat there he is there he is I like it down here you're slow rolling it yeah oh yeah whoa I mean it not the biggest one but pretty fish just pretty fish so they've changed the uh the RS on these it used to be 11 in now it's what 14 14 14 in and bag limit changed too yeah it's five a person used to be 10 a person and they got a close season now started last year in here in
the river and The Creeks around Duval and Nassau what what inshore is a big flounder what what did they consider a big a doorm 10 PB 10 Pounders yeah 10 Pounders biggest I've got was 12 lb it's been many years ago but you always see a couple 10 11s every year I looked up to see what the record is for the state you know what it is I believe it's like 22 it's 20 lb 20 9 oz it's a big fish one thing about flounder fishing when they come to the top of the water and
they start shaking their head that hook is coming out you either have to do two things you either have to try to time swinging the fish over the side of the boat and catching a leader if he's small enough without breaking your Rod of course or you've got to dip them up with a net because if you allow them to Pancake and start shaking on top of the water their mouths are so hard and they grip a bait so tight often times you don't really have them hooked they're just holding on to the bait and
when you make that mistake a few times they'll come off you'll have plenty of instances where they just come off right at the boat there he is Slow Rolling come to the top Baby Woo nice look at the size of the mouth on that one oh and he got off right there oh he pulled my blade my jig off you got a big one too I'm going to have to switch up I don't think mine are built for for that size fish I've pulled two apart now it's a fun fish borrow a spinner arm from
you yeah that one I had was a good 19 20 in as well when I'm when I turn on the Ray Marine when I'm there in in Jacksonville it's not like being here on the Nature Coast it's not like being in Louisiana and it's not like being all the way down there in the Everglades the entire satellite overlay is nothing but buildings you're like in a metro area fishing Urban stuff and that it really suits Eddie I mean it it does from his personality to his style of fishing and and honestly it's hard to argue
with the fact that it's super productive I mean like productive at another level because you're not fishing these secret quiet Spots You're fishing right out in front of everybody in community holes he just has a way of doing it better than everybody else [Music] as this current gets stronger does it require you to add more weight to the jig head do you move from4 3/8 to 3/8 to half oun absolutely you got to keep the bait down and this current as you can see is ripping and does it give you an advantage to have a
leader or not have a leader some people believe so but flounder I don't believe so they're pretty aggressive I think if they see the bait they're going to eat the bait so I don't think a leader is necessary personally you're talking about that high incoming water and the first part of the outgoing tide why is that so clean water just cleaner yeah just cleaner you know you know flounder very visual so you know they want to see the bait I mean obviously they'll feel the vibration of the spinner or the chatter bait but they need
to see the bait so I want that clean water if you've been watching our show for this is going on 17 years many of our episodes are where we're polling it seems like for Miles through back country or Acres of shallow grass Flats uh occasionally we'll fish something where we're running a trolling motor but we don't often fish where you're basically just going up 1,000 yards of Shoreline down 1,000 Shoreline back and forth well when you're flounder fishing and that water starts coming in these fish come out of the channel and they keep filtering up
there so the opportunity to catch fish over and over and over in the same Sweet Spot well it lives large the ability is there you just have to make the cast and well you have to be able to keep from getting snagged up on the bottom because these fish are lying around all this Rocky bottom and it is tough to stay in contact with your jig or your spinner bait or your ChatterBait long enough to get the bite what other types of structure do these founder really set up on docks docks troughs you know if
you get a trough a lot of docks I mean you know me rocks and docks rocks and docks that's right almost everything that's your game that is your game you know flounder is super structural so any kind of structure you got ooh you stung one there staying down one might be one of our better ones huh n oh yeah that's a good one you kidding me that is a you wipe your feet on that one that's a good one man you want to grab them yeah let me get I almost want to net that one
one nah free spol I'm going to say this one's probably it's a good fish P pushing 20 that's a good fish squeeze tail he's about 19 that's a good fish though that is a good fish keep doing this look good between pieces of bread I'll tell you that [Music] the audience is probably wondering why we're releasing all these things but it's closed season it just closed two days ago right October 15th until December [Music] 1st so really Ed there's there's there's a skill to this and the skill is being the skill is being able to
swim the the lore so it just crawls over the Rocks just barely yep swimming across because most folks are going to fish this stuff with this heavy a jig head to combat the current and they're going to be hung up and they're going to $30 worth of tackle absolutely you got to swim it got to swim it takes a little while to figure it out I love fishing the Jacksonville area and as much as I love fishing in all those marshy Creeks that I've fished forever it seems like in the past fish in that that
hardcore downtown uh St John's river fishing with Ed caver is just it it's it's just special that power fishing style that he has and being able to come up with a great show like this one for flounder fishing and also I'd like to thank our camera boat operator Brian duer he was fantastic for this this episode you guys deserve all the credit for a great show that might be my best it's a great fish yeah that's that's a good one there that one's going to be 20 for sure he's wide too he's a wide body
like a little frying pan you know they have a hard mouth CU every time that jig comes right out yeah I mean they have a super hard mouth wow great fish that's a great fish that is a great fish beautiful fish that one would be good that's a great fish that one that one would look pretty good in a fire dis all right let this I can't believe I'm letting it go nice Wow way to go man you have a hell of a flounder fishery here my friend appreciate the net job oh yeah I've lost
enough of them today because I haven't netted them that's a lot of chunk of hook to put through one of those and it's just amazing you get them in that net and you just barely tap falls out they got a hard [Music] mou today's tackle setup that Eddie cabler and I used there in Jacksonville Florida for The Flounder pounder episode uh was was by and large uh the spinner bait setup and what I've got here is I've got a typical R Bend spinner blade and uh this is a Colorado blade and I've got it rigged
uh on a spinner arm that gives me some uh what I'm going to say some variability in it because I can change the weight of it based off how hard the tide is running what do I mean by that well this is a half ounce that I was using at the end of the day when the tide was really running hard I started off the day with a/ qu ounce trout eye jig head then as the tide picked up and the water started getting a little bit higher in tide height I switched over to a
3/8 and this is the red fish eye and then there at the end when I needed more depth and the current was running at its absolute Crescendo of strength then I used the half oun now I have a system in my Busby tackle box here where I color code everything so I know what the jig head is by looking at it this clear eyes is always going to be my halves the reds are always going to be my 3/8 and then these glow eyes are always my quarters and that way without having to look or
examine or compare I've got that right there you know at my fingertips I know which ones I'm going to use now these are are 3.75 in goats what's interesting is Eddie is not a zman Pro uh he throws a bunch of other stuff and when he looked on the zman site he goes do you have any of those goats because those look like the perfect bait to throw to those flounder so this was actually the first time he threw this bait it's a 3.75 by the time you add the jig head to it it's basically
a 4in bait uh what do they look like they look a lot like a crawfish or maybe a frog if you were fishing them on a rigging hook um for us they look like shrimp or some type of bait fish moving through the water when you rig them properly on the spinner bait it gives you a pretty big profile honestly that gets the attention of the flounder and I'm sure you'd be super successful because I catch a lot of snook on these baits if you fished enough of the docks out there you'd probably really wipe
out some pretty good size red fish as well but that's basically our setup now I've got a piece of leader here Eddie said that the leader is not that important but I still felt it necessary to put some 30 lb fluorocarbon on here just makes it easier to handle and you don't break off as often uh my setup and his setup was a little bit different from mine but my setup was basically this 6'9 medium teramar XX uh I've got the tranx 15 here I was also throwing the zodius with the 200 curado on it
um I I pack all my rods basically with 20 lb braids so I can get some good distance and some good depth so that that Power Pro 20 lb matched up with this Shimano setup is actually the the best in my opinion uh for a delivery system for this spinnerbait fishing fishing there in the St John's I hope you enjoyed this episode if you want more information check out our YouTube channel we have literally hundreds of tips like this that will make you a better [Music] wow
