Other deep-structure sites in the bay also show up regularly on the annual list of top trophy flounder producers. Back River Reef, off the mouth of its namesake river just north of Hampton, gave up two-dozen citation flounder last year, including the 17-pound, 2-ounce behemoth that topped all entries. Across the bay, the dropoffs around Cape Charles attract their share of big flounder each year, especially near buoy 36A. The Cape Henry Wreck at the mouth of the bay holds big fish during the summer, and sometimes well into winter. Flatties in the 7- to 9-pound class were still being caught there by anglers trolling for stripers during late January this year. Other wrecks off Virginia Beach provide more late-season action for large fish.

But for truly big flounder during July and August, there's no better place to look than the 18-mile-long fish haven known as the CBBT. And there's no better bait to use here than super-sized offerings of live spots, croaker or menhaden. This was especially true last summer, as savvy anglers refined their trophy-hunting techniques.

"The biggest problem was finding bait that was big enough," said Captain Steve Wray, who runs a charter boat out of Lynnhaven Inlet in Virginia Beach. "Most guys ended up fishing with peanut bunker that catch mostly smaller flounder. Bigger bait will weed out the smaller fish."

Wray often starts his day by throwing a cast net in the inlet on his way out to the bay, and transferring the catch of spots, menhaden and small croaker to his livewell. Then he heads for his favorite section of the CBBT, the mile-long rock-covered tunnel tube between the third and fourth islands toward the Cape Charles end of the complex.

"The big flounder stack up on the ledges along the tube," Wray said. "Divers report seeing them shoulder to shoulder, lying on top of each other."

Wray rigs the live bait on a 3/0 Kahle hook, using a three-way swivel with a dropper to a sinker that is just heavy enough to hold bottom. Fifty-pound braided line with a diameter equal to 12-pound monofilament helps distinguish between rocks and flounder in the 50- to 60-foot depths as the bait is drifted over the ledges along the tube.

Wray controls his drift by kicking the engine in and out of gear, keeping baits in the strike zone as long as possible. Anglers need to stay alert as they work their baits up and down the ledges, lifting them up off the bottom, then dropping them again, in order to avoid getting snagged in the rocks.

"You can lose a lot of tackle if you're not paying attention," Wray said.

Still, fishing is the easy part of this exercise compared with maneuvering the boat in a manner that results in the bait being swallowed by a huge flounder instead of a boulder. But if catching big fish was easy, everyone would do it.