You can also gig flounder from a boat with a bottom about as flat as a flounder's. Secure lantern or lights to the bow; then, quietly pole through the water until you spot dinner. Obviously easier than wading -- and, given the stingray issue, a lot safer.

But gigging only works in clear water. As the flounder have moved north up the Coast, they've moved into the part of the state where clear coastal water is less common. Consequently, taking flounder on rod and reel has become much more common than it used to be. And there's nothing like the feeling of having a flounder fighting on the end of light tackle.

"Rod-and-reel fishing on the Upper Coast is the way to go," Fisher continues, "because it's difficult to gig . . . the water's not as clear."

In rod-and-reel fishing, flounder will hit either artificial or natural bait. When fishing bottoms, use plastics to lure lurking flounder into staging an ambush on your bait. On grassy flats, it's hard to beat a weedless silver spoon. Live shrimp or mud minnows work best if you don't want to use hardware.

"During the fall run, when they're making their way out to the Gulf," Fisher said, "just fish near any passes. Use finger mullet on the bottom, or a soft plastic."

No matter whether you use artificial or live bait, make sure your hooks are needle-sharp. Flounder have small mouths and a set of piranha-like chompers, so it's easy for them to spit out a lure once they realize it's not the real thing.

Also, it's best to use a net when trying to land a flounder -- not because of their size, but because trying to get one into your boat or up on the pier by hand gives the flatfish that much more opportunity to shake your hook.

Jerry Needham of Port Arthur has been fishing Sabine Lake since he was a kid. For years, he was the only fishing guide working the huge estuary --14 miles long down the middle and (except for the ship channel that cuts through it) averaging 6 or 7 feet deep.

To take flounder, Needham typically uses a curly-tailed Gulp! grub in either white or chartreuse or a curly-tailed plastic with a piece of shrimp on the hook. "I salt the shrimp, which toughens it up so it'll stay on the hook," he explained. He'll also use a jighead and attach a worm just like he was fishing for bass.

Sabine Lake has been great for flounder "ever since way back," as Needham puts it. But in 1998, a combination of natural forces -- a tropical storm, an unusually high fall tide, and other weather factors -- pushed an extra 5 feet of salt water into the lake for several days. The result: a catastrophic fish kill from oxygen deprivation in grasses killed by the salt water that really set the flounder and other species back. That, however, was a decade ago, and since then the lake has been coming back with a vengeance.

Needham catches flounder both intentionally and "accidentally" while focusing on speckled trout. "For trout, I like a Road Runner with a 1/8-ounce jig and a piece of shrimp on it," he said. "Sometimes the flounder like that, too." For flounder he suggests light spinning or baitcasting rods whose reels are spooled with 8- to 10-pound line.