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(To read part 1 of this story click here. For part 2, click here.)

Figuring out how and where to find fish during a normal tide is puzzling enough. So what do you do when you show up to your favorite inshore fishing spot and the water level's a foot or more higher than normal?

In the final part of this series on tides, Captain Charlie Thomason busts some common myths about how inshore fish react to extreme high-tide events and shares his secrets for consistently locating fish when water levels are on the rise.

Here's what Capt. Charlie says to do.

Back Off
"The mistake...

The tide cycle as it applies to inshore fishing seems like a simple concept to grasp. The tide comes in and the tide goes out. Water levels rise and fall. Baitfish and other forage species are swept in and out of bays, bayous and marshes and into the mouths of opportunistic gamefish.

Sounds like pretty basic stuff, right? It is, until Mother Nature throws you a curveball and floods the marsh with an extra foot of water or leaves your favorite reef bone-dry.

The tide cycle and the sweeping currents and water-level fluctuations it creates are fickle elements that are influenced by wind, barometric pressure, moon phase and other factors. Understanding how inshore gamefish such as speckled trout, redfish, flounder and snook react to these ever-changing variables can be the...

Somewhere along the way inshore anglers lost their skirts.

That's not a reference to cross-dressing fishermen. I'm talking about jigs. The jighead-plastic combination is probably the most widely used rig in all of inshore fishing. From North Carolina to Texas, and everywhere in between, soft-plastics rigged on leadheads are the go-to presentation for inshore fishermen.

But one thing you won't find in many saltwater tackleboxes is a traditional bass jig – as in the kind with the full skirt and weedguard, like the one pictured above. (Note: jig is shown with Jackall Ammonite Shad swimbait.)

Granted, at first glance a traditional skirted bass jig doesn't exactly look like anything most inshore gamefish eat in their...

Topwater Frogs For The Inshore Scene

Spinnerbaits, ChatterBaits, crankbaits, rattlebaits, jigs, topwater frogs, bullet weights and flippin' hooks. That sounds like a fine selection for targeting largemouth bass, but all this freshwater stuff doesn't work for inshore species like redfish, speckled trout, snook and flounder... or does it?

It seems anglers tend to be more closed-minded on the subject of freshwater vs. saltwater tackle than fish do. When it comes down to it, gamefish are gamefish. They may not look the same, fight the same or even live in the same parts of the country, but they're all opportunistic predators, which means they can be fooled by just about any artificial presentation.

In this 3-part series we'll look at several baits you'll find in the...