Biologists bewildered by Burke County catch
Freshwater flounder?
By Elizabeth Billips lizbillips@yahoo.com

Shirley Flakes holds up a fishbowl containing a flounder (closeup below) pulled from the Savannah River in Burke County. State biologists aren't sure how the two-inch fish came to be so far upstream. - Staff - Elizabeth Billips

A tiny flounder is raising some big questions for biologists.

It began last week when Burke County bait shop owner Jamie Morris reeled in his fishing line at the Georgia Power boat ramp to find a small brown leaf on its end.

The leaf turned out to be a flounder the size of his thumb - with the worm-baited hook stuck right through its lip.

"It's rare, but it does happen from time to time," state fisheries biologist Ed Bettross said after examining photographs of the Savannah River catch. "In my fifteen years with the state, I've had three or four reports of flounders caught on the river - still, it's certainly not something we expect to happen."

Even stranger, he said, is this flounder's age.

According to Bettross, flounders typically reproduce offshore in January or February, but the young fish don't start moving inshore for at least 30 to 60 days.

In the rare cases he's seen, the hooked flounder have been adult fish that swam inshore, then presumably worked their way up the Savannah River.

"The flounder in question is only two to three months old," he said. "I wouldn't expect these fish to spawn up the river ... and yet I also wouldn't expect juveniles to move so far upstream so quickly."

Regardless of the flounder's mysterious origin, Morris and his mom, Shirley Flakes, say the small catch still makes for a great story.

"Jamie didn't catch anything else that day," Flakes said. "He had to leave the river right then so he could come home and show us."