Flounders are my favorite fish to eat. It's usually hard to catch a limit of 10 with a rod and reel, but it can be easily done by gigging.
Waiting for the correct environmental conditions and having the right gear plays a big part in sticking your limit.

Recently, I went on a floundering trip with my girlfriend. The picture shows some of the tactics I use for getting some of these delicious fish.

The best time of the year to catch flounders is the late summer/early fall months. But they can be caught regularly during the spring and summer as well.
The flounders migrate offshore during the colder months to spawn, so they'll be more abundant at the beach as they move from the inshore estuaries to deeper water.

Going right after one of the first cold fronts in the early fall will be the best time.

Incoming tide is the best, and the incoming water from a bay is cleaner than the water close to the bank.
Sometimes the peak of the high tides is OK as well. I find a moderate tidal range is most productive. Slack tides cause lower movements in flounders, while extreme tides can sometimes mess up planned

Water clarity is easy: Just find the clearest water possible.

Scouting an area during the daylight will help determine this, as well.
Try floundering areas near channels and passes where cleaner water is more likely to move in quicker than long stretches of beach.
Also, look for calmer areas as waves silt up the shallows, and north winds will help keep the Gulf side of the beach calmer.

Dirty water makes it harder to spot not only flounders but stingrays, too. The football shaped fish will be the flounders. Spade-shaped stingrays like dirtier water, and are the most-common danger while gigging.

The best advice is to avoid stingrays by not walking in water where it is too deep or dirty to see the bottom.

If you cannot see the bottom, be sure to slide your feet. Stingrays should scatter away without harming you unless you step on them or make them angry, so never mistakenly gig them instead of a flounder because being in the water with a ticked-off ray is never a good idea.

Other dangers besides the obvious of drowning include sharks or porpoises attacking your stringer full of bloody flounders.
I've had sharks come eat fish off my stringer while surf fishing before, and it makes for quite the scare.

Luckily, while floundering you have a sharp spear to fend off the shark instead of just a flimsy rod tip! Go for the nose.

Also, I've read reports of porpoises taking stringers, so don't keep your stringer tied to your body in case one decides to take your stringer out in the deep to feed.

Location is the biggest factor in sticking your limit of flounders.

I like to look for any type of point from the beach that extends out into the bay, jetties or near entering water channels.
Search for a trenasse with flowing water or the entrance to a beach pond.

I like the back sides of points where the waves aren't too strong.
Many times the flounders will be more concentrated in a smaller area, so waiting 30 minutes to an hour and re-walking that location can produce a few more.

If flounder are concentrated in the spot you can try walking in a zig-zag pattern until you determine the depth most flounders are being spotted.
It's usually hard to see the bottom clearly beyond 18 inches, but around 12 inches of depth is where I find my most success, although I've seen flounders in less than 6 inches of water.

I like to look for the edge of hard drop-offs along sandbars.
Most flounders ambush their prey at the beginning of the sand flat close to the drop off instead of along a plain sand flat.

When searching for a spot, look for baitfish in the water.
If a spot is devoid of baitfish I'll quickly move along.
If fishing during the day, mark down any areas where flounders were caught, as that could be a productive spot to gig.

If you see marks in the sand where fish could've recently passed follow them.
These track marks can lead you right to the flounder.
Spotting holes where a flounder was recently bedded will give you added confidence in a spot.

Once you have located a spot, be sure to flounder as slow as possible.
Nothing is worse than spooking a big doormat with your feet from going too fast.

As for the gear, I like to use a waterproof underwater light.
These work way better than the old Coleman lanterns I used to use as a kid floundering Isles Dernieres out of Cocodrie.

I power the light by hooking it up to a waterproof four-pound jet ski battery placed in a camo fanny pack or schoolbag. This will give you storage area for your gear food and drinks, too.

Any spear will work. I like to attach some thick nylon rope to the end of my spear with a crab float placed on the end.
After spearing the flounder, I slide the flounder up the spear and onto the attached stringer.
Then they easily drag along in the water.
I know some people use a gig with several barbed points,
but this means you have to have a separate stringer and have to transfer the fish, so there is a chance for the fish to escape.

Always keep a compass on you when floundering remote islands where there are no lights to pinpoint the direction of the beach.
When on a far-out sand bar in the Gulf, it is easy to get turned around and forget which side is the beach.

As the incoming tide rises, the deep area between the sandbar and the beach will just as easily be confused with the Gulf,
turning your fun trip a frightening experience.

This may sound silly,
but working in the woods at night throughout my younger years has taught me to always be prepared because the night can be deceiving.

Having an extra headlight is always a good idea.
Keep all electronics like a GPS or cell phone in a Ziploc bag.
You never know when you may fall and get your gear wet.
This is why wearing waders may not be a good idea, as it can be a drowning hazard.

Shoes should be worn so you don't get cut on debris, crabs or seashells.
Dangerous staph infections can be contracted in the hot summertime months, especially in water from those stagnated beach ponds.

After going floundering I like to mark my catch and details of the trip in a flounder log.
I'll include results, time, date, location, results, etc.
Many of the small details that may help aid in future trips in years to come can be forgotten unless written down.

The best time of the year to go flounder gigging is soon approaching. So get your gear ready, and soon you'll have one of Louisiana's tastiest fish cooking up in your pot.

FLOUNDER FACTS by Jerald Horst (Revised July 2003)

Although 18 species of the lefteye flounder family are found in the northern Gulf of Mexico, flounder in Louisiana almost invariably means the southern flounder.

Its Latin name, Paralichthys lethosigma, literally means “parallel fish that forgot its spots.”

In Louisiana, southern flounders can be found from 100 miles up the Mississippi River in pure fresh water,
out to full-strength seawater off the coast, although most studies show that they are most common at moderate salinities.

Most research indicates that male flounders stay in offshore waters year-round.
Male flounders are small, seldom growing larger than 10 to 12 inches, but the females grow larger and move longer distances.
Females may reach 23 inches long, and spend most of the year in inshore waters, only migrating offshore during October to December to spawn.
Excellent catches of flounder can be made during this period.

Female southern flounders spawn several times during their short annual spawning period, producing about 100,000 eggs each spawn.
Spawning seems to be triggered by water temperatures of about 56 degrees F and usually occurs between 5 and 9 a.m.

After hatching, larval southern flounders grow most rapidly in highly saline waters.
Young flounders begin to appear in Louisiana inshore estuaries between January and April, and range 1/4 inch to 2 inches in length.
Like other fish, flounders hatch with one eye on each side of the head.
Movement of the right eye to the left side of the head begins when the fish is 1/3 to 1/2 inch long and is complete when the fish is 3/4 inch to 1 inch long.
At this same time, the left side develops its dark color and the right side turns white.

After hatching, southern flounder larvae eat microscopic floating animals (plankton).
As juvenile fish, they eat small bottom animals.
At about 6 inches long, they adopt their adult diet of fish and shrimp.
One study in Lake Pontchartrain showed that 89 percent of their diet was fish, with 41 percent being anchovies (sardines).
In Barataria Bay, another study showed that 94 percent of their diet consisted of mullets and anchovies.

In Texas, researchers have noted that the southern flounder is the dominant predator of shrimp in the spring, and that most of its diet is anchovies, mullets, shrimp, menhaden (pogies) and croakers.

In Mississippi, southern flounders’ stomachs most frequently contained fish, with one-third having shrimp in them.
Interestingly, as flounders get larger they don’t eat larger fish, they just eat more small ones.

Female southern flounders grow more rapidly than males.
A research project in Louisiana did not find a male southern flounder over 13.5 inches long.
Another study in Georgia showed no males more than 16 inches long, and research in Texas showed no males over 12.8 inches long.
Female flounders grow quickly their first two years; then their growth slows.
Approximate average lengths at each age for females are:
Age 1, 10 inches; Age 2, 16.7 inches; Age 3, 18.8 inches; Age 4, 19.6 inches; Age 5, 20 inches; Age 6, 20.4 inches; and Age 7, 20.5 inches.
Few females live beyond seven years old and almost no males live past three years old.

Flounders are considered “ambush predators.”
Instead of actively pursuing their prey, they lie in wait in areas that are likely to concentrate or disorient small fish or shrimp.
From their position on the bottom, flounders pounce on these animals as they move by.

Because of their feeding habits, large numbers of flounders will concentrate in good ambush areas.
Especially productive are current-swept points and channels that serve as choke points for tidal currents.

Southern flounders take live bait, jigs, or even spoons that are fished near the bottom.
Because their mouth opens side-to-side, rather than vertically, small hooks will produce more hook-ups than large hooks.

Flounders may also be gigged with a one-pronged spear in shallow waters at night by fishermen using lanterns for illumination.
Firm sandy bottoms are preferred for easy wading.
Gigging is most successfully conducted on a rising tide and in clear water.
The largest flounders are almost invariably gigged in October and November near Louisiana’s barrier islands, as the larger females appear in these waters during their spawning migration to offshore waters.

Currently, the daily recreational limit on southern flounders is 10 per day.
The possession limit (on land) is 10 southern flounders per day per licensed person for each consecutive day spent on the water.
There is no minimum size limit on southern flounders in Louisiana.

Fall is the best of days for flounder-gigging in Southeast Louisiana
This is the section of marsh Sam Barbera and Kevin Ford gigged Monday night.
Some typical hotspots, Barbera said,
include marshes near Geohegan's Canal,
the Intracoastal Waterway and Chef Pass.
Todd Masson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Todd Masson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on September 26, 2014 at 4:05 PM, updated September 26, 2014 at 4:08 PM
Avid flounder-gigger Sam Barbera doesn't like the winds that come with autumn cold fronts, but that's his only gripe about targeting the fish that is his favorite this season of year.

"This is the best time, but we gig pretty much year 'round," he said. "The only reason we don't go in the winter is because it's so cold. But the fall is most productive, and the bugs aren't nearly as bad."

Fall is the season when flounder gorge themselves in anticipation of their annual migration, Kevin Ford said. Ford accompanied Barbera on a gigging expedition earlier this week.

"This is the primest of the prime time for flounder-gigging, but in the marsh, you can do it all the time," Ford said. "If flounder are in the area, they're going to come up into the shallows at night."

One of the best autumn floundering spots that Ford knows about is in the West Bay Diversion south of Venice.

"That's a real sandy, muddy place, and when it gets into the fall, the flounder will get thick on those banks," he said. "You have to make sure the river's down and the water's clear, but there's a ton of flounder over there.

You can really do well gigging them." Really, though, productive spots are all over the Southeast Louisiana marsh.

"Just go take your boat and ride around during the middle of the day;" Ford advised.

"Get right up against the marsh. If you can see an incline coming up and there's a little flat there, that's where you want to go. Those fish move up there to ambush the shrimp and pogies at night.

"You don't want to do it when there's a super high tide. The best time to find places to gig flounder isn't at night; it's during the day."

Todd Masson can be reached at tmasson@nola.com or 504.232.3054. Follow @ TmassonFISH Tweet to @TmassonFISH