I don't remember exactly when it happened, other than around the time I was 14 or 15. We were sitting in a booth at a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Coast, and I was about to order my usual fried shrimp plate.

"I'm going to have the flounder," my mother said as she studied the menu. "It's really good. You ought to try it."

A motherly recommendation would ordinarily be enough right there for most teenagers to stick with the fried shrimp, but maybe I was more suggestible. At any rate, I decided to try the flounder.

That long-ago supper -- I think it might have been in Port Lavaca -- got me hooked on flounder. I certainly haven't forsaken fried shrimp (or shrimp prepared any other way, for that matter), but fresh flounder, particularly stuffed or broiled, is my favorite seafood dish. (Well, OK, there's red snapper -- but this story's about flounder.)

While they taste great, flounder do look a little weird. To fish scientists, the southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) is "laterally compressed"; to us mortals, it's flat -- a veritable swimming pancake with a small body cavity and no air bladder, which makes it easier for it to operate along the bottom. Oh -- and both eyes are on its left side.

Their bellies pale, their mottled backs capable of changing colors and so serving admirably as camouflage, flounder tend to lie around on the bottom, blending in with the surroundings until something edible wanders by. Then, in a flurry of sand or spray of mud, they light into whatever small fish or crustacean whose luck has just run out.

Most flounder taken in Texas are in the 14- to 16-inch range and weigh a pound to a pound and a half. One fish makes an individual serving, two enable you to invite a friend, and a limit will feed your family a couple of times. Females tend to be larger than the males, so most caught in Texas are of that gender.

The Texas record, caught in the Gulf, weighed in a Texas-sized 14.5 pounds and extended 34.5 inches. The second-largest flounder, 13 pounds, was reeled in from Sabine Lake in 1976. The world record -- a 20-pound-plus specimen big enough to feed a whole family and more -- came out of Florida waters in 1983.

My introduction to flounder as table fare came in the early 1960s. Back then, the flatfish was plentiful all up and down the Coast. But in the 1970s, flounder numbers began to decline. To turn that trend around, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department banned commercial gill-netting, took measures to lessen the number of flounder taken by shrimp trawlers (by-catch) and in 1998 established a minimum size (14 inches) and a bag limit (10). More recently, the bag limit and the possession number were made the same to avoid double-dipping. Since then, these conservation measures designed to decrease pressure on the species seem to have stabilized the population.

Not only is the flounder a fine-eating fish, but it's also one that's fun to catch. Though an aggressive species, they don't fight like a big speckled trout or bull redfish -- but you know you have a fish on the line when you hook one.

So what are the top five flounder hotspots in Texas?