Flounder make surprise summer show

Don’t know why this happens, but every summer coastal anglers are blessed with what only can be called “a bonus fish.”

One year it was dolphin, the fish not the mammal, and one year it was black drum. Sheepshead, bull croaker and giant white trout had their turns.

This year it’s flounder.

An abundance of the flat fish was first noticed at the Catholic High Alumni Rodeo in early June. There were years when a single angler with a single fish showed up on that leaderboard. This year the count stopped at 20 weighed flounder.

And, they kept coming.

Grand Isle Rodeo weighmaster Marty Bourgeois said there were more showing up in the granddaddy of all saltwater events this year, but nothing of great size.

Yet, in the Blue Boot Rodeo in Grand Isle last month, a four-pounder took the top prize — that’s a big flounder.

So, why?

Creel limits are relatively new, a 10-fish-per-day limit, along with an Oct. 15-Nov. 30 closed season, and it’s too early to tell if those new regulations have had enough time to affect this year’s catch.

So, when reading up on flounder, it appears a flounder “run” is cyclical, that water temperatures influences the sex of a flounder — the warmer the water the more male flounder in our waters — and since we came through a relatively cold winter maybe we have more female flounder, and more females mean more eggs, which means more little flounder.

No matter the reason, flounder are “in” this summer, and now you just have to be able to afford crabmeat for that stuffed flounder recipe to make tablefare fit for a king — and a queen.

Freezer Day

Hunters for the Hungry director Julie Grunewald is urging hunters to beat last year’s record-setting 21,881-pound collection in the statewide Clean Out Your Freezer campaign. This year’s collection begins next weekend.

While this organization began in the 1990s to urge hunters to clear their freezers to get ready for the upcoming hunting seasons, you don’t have to be a hunter to contribute.

The program’s target is for “…anyone and everyone to drop off properly packaged and labeled frozen goods,” which means packaged meats should be labeled and dated.

That’s because food banks won’t accept the donations that can’t be identified. Vacuum-sealed and those items from professional processor work out best, but they must be frozen.

Volunteers will staff collection sites around the state and will have ice chests to accept donations.

The list of dates, times and locations are listed elsewhere on this page. If you have questions, you can email Grunewald: julie@h4hla.org.

Big reward

State Wildlife and Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have posted a $12,500 reward for information leading to the person or persons responsible for killing an endangered whooping crane found in January this year in Evangeline Parish.

According to these agencies, the juvenile crane was found dead in a pond in Mamou on the south side of Besi Lane. A necropsy found a shot fractured the bird’s spine and led to internal hemorrhaging.

The reward’s total comes from funding by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation, the International Crane Foundation and the Dallas Zoo.

If you have information, call the Fish and Wildlife Service (985) 882-3756 or Wildlife and Fisheries’ Lake Charles Office (337) 491-2588. Callers can remain anonymous.

No dogs?

Last week the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation filed suit in a Michigan federal court against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with hopes of rescinding a new regulation restricting the importation of dogs into our country.

The two federal agencies cite a need to prevent the spread of rabies to our country as the reason for imposing the new rule.

The foundation says the new rule even applies to countries such as Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy among others are countries “… which the Center for Disease Control classifies as ‘low risk’ or ‘free’ of dog rabies.”

Guess we can be thankful a long-ago waterfowl hunter decided to bring Labrador retrievers into Louisiana.