The largest reef asset is the wreck of a 165-foot tanker, prominently placed nearly dead center on the reef site. The doldrums of July, when the humidity sticks like a wet blanket, is the best time to hit the Great Egg Reef for doormat fluke. Many anglers have discovered the potential to hang a doormat-sized fluke on this particular reef site. You’ll see legions of drifters bouncing big 4- to 6-ounce bucktails here in August and September.

A lot of the older wrecks here have been deteriorated to low profiles over the bottom. But they still provide excellent feeding grounds for hungry summer flounder.

These five spots are great summer season haunts, but many others exist in, around and off the Jersey coast. Don’t be afraid to look around and see what you can come up with. You may have the spots, but what kind of tactics do you need to ensure fluke on the dinner table for weeks to come?

PROVEN DOORMAT STRATEGIES
“Hands down, for big-bay fishing, live baits slam doormats,” Captain Kwolek states. “Around Jersey waters, peanut bunker or snapper bluefish make their presence known from mid-June through the summer months. Make no mistake, fluke follow the schools of baitfish.”

Kwolek should know! One mid-June afternoon, as he fished Ambrose Channel in Raritan Bay on a hunch, snapper blues and 4-inch peanut bunker were thick in the bay’s waters. Within an hour of drifting live snapper bluefish, Kwolek pulled aboard the Hook ‘Em Up a formidable, almost unheard-of catch of three doormats that weighed 11.5, 10.5 and 10.2 pounds. Reread that statement, because it doesn’t happen that often.

Live baits work insane magic when available, and beastly fluke will hone in on anything they can wrap their teeth around, regardless of its size.

On a ripping tide, hook your live bait under the mouth and through the upper lip to give it a natural appearance. But when the tide reaches two hours on either side of the end of the outgoing or the beginning of the incoming, live baits are best hooked just behind the dorsal fin. This allows a free-swimming motion in the stagnant water.

Large fluke are aggressive, but will expend the least amount of energy required to chase down a meal. Captains report that the stomach of a big fluke will often contain peanut bunker, bluefish, small sea bass, crabs, squid, mantis shrimp, small blackfish, and even juvenile fluke.

Different schools of thought permeate the playbooks of many of the greatest doormat anglers. But for ocean fishermen, one chunk of advice is constant across the board: Use big baits!

Doormat-hound Austin Perilli runs the charter Bucktail and swears that big baits bring colossal ocean flatties to boatside. “No doubt about it. Big strip baits are my only choice to tackle gigantic fluke -- and these baits have to be as fresh as you can get. I’ll bring one rod with me specifically to catch sea robins, dogfish, herring, sundials or bluefish, so that I can get the freshest strip bait available. Absolutely nothing beats the swagger and undulation of that strip as it vibrates through the water. Doormats simply cannot control themselves.”