[Mike P]

Depending on where you're fishing, "beginning of the flood" could mean the first couple of hours of the incoming tide, or the first couple of hours of the incoming current after slack.

From a beach "flood" usually refers to the stage of tidal height, not the direction of the current. In an inlet or breachway, flood usually refers to the current. And in almost every inlet anywhere in the world, slack current doesn't occur exactly at the time of dead low or peak high tide. There's a lag of anywhere from 40 minutes to as much as 3 hours, depending on the size of the estuary behind the inlet.