Taking fish with a knife

I have taken flounder with a knife several times when night diving.

I know that there are numerous species of flounder, and I don't know what kind you have in South Florida, but the Gulf Flounder and Southern Flounder that we get in the Northern GOM are excellent table fair. Certainly my favorite inshore fish. The thin, white, flaky fillets are especially well suited to baking (with crabmeat and cornbread topping), pan frying, or encrusting with pecans or other nuts.

I have some pics of the fish posing with my kids, but the wife has a non-negotiable rule against me posting pics of the kids on the web.

The Gulf flounder we get are easily recognizable by the three prominant spots, and usually run smaller at 2-3 lbs. The Southern flounder are larger. I have gigged them to six lbs, and they run as large as about 8 lbs in my area. They get much larger in other places, however, with the world record over 20 lbs, I think.

I get them diving from time to time, but mostly we gig them from a small boat in shallow water around sand bars at night.

At night you can definitely stab a whole lot of fish. I've seen Hogfish asleep by seafans, with the hogfish camouflaged to the color of the fan. If they weren't so slippery, I'd have caught them before.

Quote from seahunter49

So what's it like sticking a knife into a flounder? Apart from the "man the hunter" ego trip is it a better option than using a short flopper shaft with a wood grip? Is the interesting aspect of it making due with what you just happened to have (a knife) as opposed to planning to be more productive?

I don't spearfish at night, so the flounder were taken when I was making night scuba dives just because I enjoy seeing all the wee beasties that only come out after dark. Certainly, the knife would be far less effective than just about anything else if you were planning a hunt. In each of the cases where I took fish that way, I was ending the dive and moving up towards the beach to make my exit, when I happened upon the fish.

Flounder trust their camouflage to the extreme, and almost never bolt. So from that standpoint, they are usually very easy to approach and stab at short range. It would be a real stretch to call it sporting, so the reward is not in the chase. I guess there is a little satisfaction when you successfully improvise, though. But mostly I just like to eat them!

Quote from seahunter49

So this is how you entertain yourself. It's 9pm.. hmm.. I feel like taking a long refreshing dip. Grab the scuba gear and head to the beach. Swim out in pitch darkness and then submerge to see the little sea critters. Swim back to shore and casually knife a flounder on the way. Jeff, you're hardcore.

As a kid, I made my spending money "retrieving" golf balls from the nearby golf course ponds and selling them to the local sporting goods store. Of course, the golf course frowned on such activity, so we went about it at night. With my background swimming in scuzzy, snake infested ponds, I guess nite diving in clear water didn't seem like a stretch.

No, the ponds were pretty shallow. We would generally just wade around from the shore out to neck deep, feeling for the balls with our bare feet. When we felt a ball, we submerged and picked it up. Sometimes we swam out in the deeper water, but we found that we got more balls in the shallower water anyway, because most of the errant shots fell only a little short, and didn't splash in the middle of the pond. I did lead the technological charge, though, when a cousin gave me an old wetsuit top that he had found somewhere!

Hubert sent me this the other day, pretty cool

http://forums.deeperblue.com/f…0541-wahoo-polespear.html