Summer flounder have three distinct ocellated brown spots on their back near the tail on the left side, or top of the fish, and white on the right side, or bottom. Here is how you tell the summer flounder, also known as a fluke from other flatfish in your area. These are your first critical clues that this fish is not a winter flounder, but something else. Known better regionally as fluke, the summer flounder are a left-eyed flounder, not right-eyed. This species has a large angled mouth with sharp serrated teeth both dorsal and anal fins are symmetrical and separated considerably from the anal fin. In Massachusetts, summer flounder are frequently caught on the north side of Cape Cod in Cape Cod Bay every summer and fall, but are more abundant on the south side of the Cape and all points south. ![]() They are the most abundant flat fish from Cape Lookout, NC north through Delaware, but have been observed and caught as far north as Maine. Summer flounder ( paralichthys dentatus) are found from Massachusetts south to Florida on the Atlantic Coast. After spending several weeks growing, and living on the bottom, their left eye will move to the right side of their body and that is when they start to look like the flounder we all know and love to eat. Five to six weeks after they hatch, larvae settle to the bottom to begin their metamorphosis into juveniles. At this stage, they are so small you cannot see them with the naked eye. As they develop, the eye that migrates to the top of the animal will determine if the flounder is a right-eyed, or left-eyed, and further fine-tune what species you are currently looking to Identify. However, here is where things get interesting – newly hatched larval flounder of all species, have one eye on each side of the head and swim vertically in the water column just like every other fish in the sea. They will cover themselves with sand or mud to increase their chances of survival from predation. If you see large puckering lips in front of the fish’s eyes, bingo, you have just identified a winter flounder.Īll flatfish use camouflage to hide from predators and blend in on the bottom. No other species of flounder found in the Northeast has large puckering lips directly in front of their eyes. This species is a right-eyed flounder, with very full, robust large puckering lips extending out just in front of their eyes, and have a straight lateral line. They can be found in estuaries, out to the continental shelf in the Northwest Atlantic, and range from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in Canada south to northern North Carolina. This species is also known as sole, lemon sole, Georges Bank flounder and blackback flounder. ![]() ![]() Winter flounder ( pseudopleuronectes americanus) are the most abundant species of flounder found north of Cape Cod and throughout the entire Gulf of Maine. ![]() They all live and feed on the bottom in similar habitats they are all flat and generally football-like in shape, so how do you tell them apart? The first technique in whittling down the pool of potential suspects is to know which fish is most plentiful in what regions of the Atlantic, from Delaware north to Canada. The challenge with so many different species of flatfish is how to identify one from the other. There are nine species of flatfish that are found in our Northwest Atlantic waters, including winter, summer, windowpane, four spot, witch, and yellowtail flounder, along with the hogchoker, American plaice and Atlantic halibut. Nine potential flatfish you’re apt to encounter on local waters this season. The Fisherman’s Matt Broderick shows off a hogchoker, a flatfish often found nearer freshwater drainages along the Atlantic coast.
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