Sometimes these eddies can be huge. At the Galveston jetties I've seen eddies 80 yards across; at the Sabine jetties, they're commonly 40 to 50 yards across. To narrow down your search, use electronics to find the washout from the current, which is usually just beyond the last hunks of granite in the jetty.

Another sort of spot at the jetties to investigate for flounder is in the boat cuts. Here the tidal exchange can be extreme, and flounder can crowd in thick, but they're often difficult to fish because of both the heavy current and boat traffic. The easiest place in which to position oneself is on the side of the boat best enabling you to throw against the current and allow the bait to drift backwards.

Fishing the passes between a bay and the Gulf north of a jetty system can be equally productive. The key here is to understand points of migration. The term "pass" doesn't necessarily denote a bottleneck area like Southwest Pass, but can also designate a historic area of flounder migration. Prime examples in Louisiana would be several points around West Cove in Lake Calcasieu. No physical reason drives the flounder through this spot, but they're there every year; it's part of their historic migration route.

The angler should keep in mind that fewer factors are in play at a pass than at other spots. As pass is a transitory position for flounder to hold at, they're either there or they're not, and if you've got the patience, you can usually score by simply waiting for the next school to move. Be mindful of outgoing tides -- they're the force that pushes flounder through.

Since flounder congregate in groups ranging from a few individuals to several dozen -- especially during migration -- keep pattern casting in mind. Try to cover every square inch of key flounder habitat in a given area. Throw to one spot; then, throw a foot or two over with your next cast until you've covered the entire area. It often pays to work the same spots over twice, since you may miss the exact spot by a few inches. Since flounder aren't very mobile, the key to catching them is to cover lots of ground.

The reason I mention these locations is that if you can find one, you may very well have your own hotspot that no one would fish. During the last part of the spring migration a few years ago, I found one when I stopped to ask a couple fishing from the side of the road what they were catching. I expected that the answer would be croaker, and maybe a few redfish, as we were in the ship channel away from any cut or bay; instead, they made reply by holding up a stringer of flounder. The next day I showed up there and caught a limit myself. A bass angler would call these spots "staging points"; I guess that's what they are. Perhaps the fish there just stop to rest and eat, or simply stop for no real reason.

Anglers who get heavily into flounder fishing will notice many similarities between flatfish and largemouth bass. In fact, I've always said that a skilled tournament bass angler could catch a lot of flounder. Like bass, flounder are patternable, more so than any other inland saltwater fish. Anglers not intimately familiar with flounder complain that they're difficult to catch, but in reality, they're far easier to pattern than are reds and specks. The reason: Flounder are largely territorial, and their bite patterns are driven more by the tides than are those of their saltwater counterparts. Once you learn the little intricacies of your favorite flounder areas, you'll find this to be true, and will attain the ability to pattern a fish that relatively few anglers truly understand.