Fluke Fishing Charters

Cape Cod Fluke Fishing Charters on Nantucket Shoals is really something special.

Nantucket shoals basically start at Monomoy Island and run 65 miles to the south and east. The shoals are the reason why fishing is so good here. Thanks to the glacier deposits which made Cape Cod, Nantucket and Nantucket shoals there is constant mixing of hot and nutrient-filled cold water. This cold water holds the feed for plankton which in turn feed the bait and where there is bait there are fish. Squid, mackerel, butter fish, menhaden, herring and, most of all, sand eels fill the waters around Cape Cod and Nantucket Shoals. Fluke can be found in abundance on and around the shoals because of this bait starting in late spring through late fall.

I started fluke fishing with my Dad on a wooden inboard skiff when I was too young to see over the rail. Back in the day Loran-C did not exist and radar/AutoPilot on a smaller craft was a rare find. Dad navigated with a compass, depth finder, stopwatch and when off shore used a radio direction finder to get a bearing to the sea buoy. I remember in those days when you thought you were close to the sea buoy coming home in the fog you would stop the engine and then run in the direction of the sound of the bell on the bouy to get home. I don't think there were any limits on fluke way back when, never do I remember measuring or counting fish. Times have changed.

How to catch fluke/summer flounder

I have caught fluke on Nantucket Shoals in water as shallow as 10 feet on top of the shoals and into waters well over 100 feet in depth. Flukes are a lot more aggressive than most think. In that shallow water it is not uncommon to see several flukes chasing your bait and even chase it to the boat and get hooked at the rail. One time many years ago I was striped bass/blue fishing on a charter off Nantucket. NO JOKE we caught a lot of bass and blues on that trip but also caught 22 fluke while bass fishing; none of the fluke were hooked on the bottom because of the depth of the water and the mid-water gear I was using. When fluke want to eat, it's game on.

Fluke or Summer flounder range throughout the east coast and southern New England. Large females can lay up to 4 million eggs, spawn in the fall and can live up to 20 years. The male fluke rarely lives over 5 years and only grows to about 5 pounds max. They start to reproduce at about age 3. On my boat the largest fluke landed so far was just shy of 15 pounds, the Massachusetts state record is 21 pounds 8 oz caught off Nomans Island in 1980. In turn, the IGFA world record for fluke is 22 pounds 7oz caught off Montauk NY in 1975.

I love fluke fishing and they are even better for eating than catching. Funny thing, we have run over 50 miles from the dock looking for fluke and in the summertime I set a minnow pot at my slip for bait. In that pot I catch grass shrimp, killies/chubs, but most interesting is that I will pull the pot to find up to a dozen baby fluke the size of your thumb nail. I am truly as grateful to see those baby fluke in my pot as I am to see them come over the rail.

So come fluke fishing with us on Nantucket shoals! All the best, Capt. Len Greiner