Mississippi Gulf Coast’s Fantastic Summertime Fishing with Captain Kyle Jarreau
Day 5: Captain Kyle Jarreau on Catching and Gigging Flounder at Mississippi’s Cat Island
Editor’s Note: Captain Kyle Jarreau, a guide for Shore Thing Charters based out of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, is one of the finest chefs on the Upper Gulf Coast. He can turn a mess of speckled trout, redfish and flounder into cuisine that will have fishermen fighting for second helpings. This week, Jarreau will tell us how he catches speckled trout, redfish and flounder on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. I always look forward to going to Biloxi, Mississippi, staying at the Isle of Capri Casino and Resort, and fishing with Shore Thing Charters Captain Sonny Schindler, also with Shore Thing, has been my guide and a friend for several years. He’s always glad to see me coming. We have a good time fishing and fellowshipping while I’m there, and as I’m packing-up to leave, he’s always grinning and saying, “Now, when can I book you to come back?” Shore Thing Charters is growing and has added more guides and a new, spacious, luxurious lodge on Cat Island that boasts some of the finest fishing on the entire Gulf Coast. On this trip, I primarily fished with Captain Kyle Jarreau, who was a fishing guide when I met him and became a friend before I left.
 Question: Kyle, how do you take flounder out at Cat Island?
Jarreau: We have two methods of catching flounder. We can catch them on rods and reels, but we also have underwater lights and gigs so that we can gig the shallow water for flounder after a day of fishing. If our customers aren’t tired of catching fish all day, or if they come-in the afternoon before the day they’re going to fish and want to go floundering at night, we’ve got everything they need to go-out and gig a mess of flounder before they go fishing the next day.
 Question: If you’re fishing for flounder, how do you catch them?
Jarreau: We use two methods – artificial lures and live baits. For live bait, we use mud minnows or live shrimp. If we’re going to use artificial lures, we use grubs like Strike King’s Glass Minnows. I prefer to fish points that have a lot of current coming around them, and I like to fish for the flounder on a falling tide. The falling tide and the current pull the bait and the shrimp out of the marsh and sweep it into a flounder’s mouth. All the flounder has to do is lie on the bottom and open its mouth, and the bait will just about swim into its mouth. I like to use the Glass Minnow with a strip of either speckled trout belly or croaker belly on the end of the hook as a trailer. I’ll cast to the shore and hop the bait along the bottom. If there’s a flounder there, it will eat the bait. The flounder generally like to hold on the edge of a drop-off or below the drop-off. Once again, Strike King’s electric-chicken-colored Glass Minnow is one of my favorite baits.
Question: How many flounder will you catch on a good day?
Jarreau: If I’m strictly targeting flounder, I usually can catch 15 to 20.
 Question: Do you fish for them any other way?
Jarreau: Yes. When I’m fishing in the marsh, often the flounder will gang-up at the mouth of a drain (a stream of water that comes out of the marsh bringing baitfish with it on a falling tide). I’ll cast-up into the drain with a Glass Minnow, pick-up the bait off the bottom, let it ride the current and then fall back to the bottom. The flounder generally will be holding in the mouth of the drain or in the eddy pool off to the left or the right side of the drain where there’s a back current. Although I can catch flounder almost all year, the fall seems to be the best time for catching flounder.
 Question: How do you like to prepare your flounder once you catch them?
Jarreau: I scale the flounder with a Mister Twister EZ-ScaleR attached to my Mister Twister electric knife. I butterfly the flounder (slit the flounder right down the center on the dark side of the fish and make two pockets on either side of the cut) and then stuff those pockets with crabmeat and shrimp. I put some garlic powder, butter and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
on the outside of the fish and rub it into the fish. I put a little olive oil on the bottom side of the flounder to keep it from sticking to the pan. When my flounder’s stuffed and seasoned, I’ll bake it for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees. That will be one of the finest meals you’ve ever eaten. If you’ve never fished for flounder and you eat one of my stuffed flounders, you’ll be hooked on flounder fishing.
To learn more about fishing in salt water, contact Captain Kyle Jarreau at Shore Thing Charters at (228)324-5990, or visit www.shorethingcharters.com, or email him at jusaddwater@aol.com. For more information on fishing in Mississippi, call 1-886-SEE-MISS (733-6477), or go to www.visitmississippi.org. For more information about the Mister Twister EZ-ScaleR, visit www.mistertwister.com.
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