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Useful kit connected to this guide, chosen to keep the next step simple.
Full flounder guide
How to spot it, where it lives, how it is caught and how to cook it — the complete guide, in one easy read.
The flounder is the flatfish with grit, equally at home in salt and in the half-fresh water of an estuary. It pushes far up into the brackish reaches, thriving in the harbours and river bends close to the bank where the open-sea flatfish never venture. Learn to tell it from a plaice and you have a willing, close-to-home fish for much of the year.
How to spot it
A flounder is a true flatfish, one eye having crept across the head, with a broad, stocky build roughly half as wide as it is long. The top is a greenish-brown scattered with faint reddish flecks, the belly clean white. To split it from a plaice, use the touch test: drag a finger along the lateral line and over the bases of the fins and you will feel rough, prickly tubercles, where a plaice stays smooth. The greenish cast gives it away too, against a plaice's warmer brown and bold orange spots. Most run to around 30cm. That stocky frame and the prickly line are your two surest signs.
Where it lives
Related guides and gear
FAQs
Quick fish questions
Short answers for the questions families and coastal readers often ask first.
How do you tell a flounder from a plaice?
Feel the lateral line and the base of the fins. A flounder has rough, prickly tubercles there, where a plaice stays smooth. The flounder is also a stockier, greenish-brown fish with faint reddish flecks, rather than the plaice's warmer brown body and bold orange spots.
Is flounder sustainable?
Flounder is a widespread, fast-growing estuary fish that is only lightly fished, so it is a reasonable choice - though the stock is data-poor and largely unmanaged rather than confirmed healthy. Take local inshore fish, stick to local minimum sizes, and go easy through the February-to-May spawning window.
Can you eat flounder?
Yes. Flounder has soft, mild white flesh and makes good eating, even if it sits a notch below sole. Grilled whole on the bone with butter and lemon, or filleted and pan-fried in foaming butter with a few capers, a fresh flounder is a fine supper.