Tides
 

I have heard may times people talk about tides
waiting for a tide
fishing a tide and so on

What does this mean to you?

Tides are the rising and falling of Earth's ocean surface caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the Sun acting on the oceans.

Tides open up and expose certain places to fish. Favorite rock or bar turning on with the tide. And sometimes fish wait for the turn - like clockwork :wall:

High and low tide can both lead to deeper water. High tide for a shallow area is obviously deeper than low tide and low tide in certain spots allows you to reach deeper areas that you couldn't wade within casting distance to on high tide.

To me it means moving water, a few places I fish even open beaches the current will move north to south or south to north depending on rise or fall the fish wait for bait to get swept by and feed. Other times it means falling water so I can get out to that certain rock to find a special hole. some times at spots I need water to fill or drain a bar or trough to allow bait in or out.

As the saying goes: "Tides and time wait for no one."
Depending on where and when you plan on fishing, it can play a major part in your fishing excursion.

What does it mean to me? well it means that if I wait around for the right tide I may never get to fish at all with so little time as it is!!! I do prefer certain place at a certain tide but dont let it stop me and sometimes the "wrong tide" surprises me!!!

If I'm going from shore, I always check the tides and then choose where I am going to go. I have a couple of spots for different tides and different wind conditions. If it's going to be a plus or minus tide, I may decide to stay home because I don't seem to have much luck then. As Tattoobob said, it's all about the moving water. If I'm going on the boat, I don't think about the tides too much.

Great question! Here are my semi-random thoughts...

If I am at the water's edge, my line is in the water.
On time I was fishing...this guy was sitting there waiting for the tide.
A long story short, he held my rod as I pulled the hook out of a keepers mouth.

I fish the incoming and the outgoing. I am not too focused on the actual tide, but the structure that is formed or exposed as the tide come in or goes out.
I "wait for" bait holding structure, which tends to change as a function of the tide

It use to mean a lot when I was in the surf. Now not so much in the boat.
In the boat I can always find fish. I have high, mid and low tide spots and they all produce so, other than not wanting to run aground or hit something, tides don't have a great affect on me anymore.

It dictates where I fish in the surf..
in the boat it dictates which SIDE of the structure I fish...

Certain point of the tides in certain spots cause dumping of areas full of bait.I like to set up before and after this time but will fish any tide.Never had luck @ high tide.

You could write a whole book about the effects of tides on fishing. Each spot , in or outgoing , stage of the tide , when the current turns relative to high and low water , lag of outflows , the often missed left to right currents even on long open beaches , etc , etc.

Great point.

Sound a like a great topic to write about; given the lack of literature on this subject.

There are spots, most I guess, where the fishing turns on and off like clockwork at certain stages of the tide. You just have to learn them. Dont forget time of day or night and phase of moon figure in as well.

it used to mean a lot more than it does now.. i used to swear by the 2 hour mark before and after high.. after last year... i just means "find water deep enough"

actually that said.. at high i hit back waters and bays.. low i hit the open beaches. fish would much rather trap bait in small areas like rivers and harbors and what not. buuuuuuut... they still eat at low tide. i caught way more low tide fish last year than high tide fish. usually bigger too. i think it's because of a funnel effect.. at high tide there are so many nooks and crannies they can get into, making it hard to find em. low tide they all get forced out.. and swim ""aimlessly"" between those spots. i guess i like to think of low tide as the fishes rush hour. and high tide is their jobs/home time.

GonnaCatchABig1,
Interesting paterns. Out of curiosity, do you keep a fishing journal? If so, are you using pen and paper or an application (e.g. Excel, etc).

-Fish360

nope.. i just keep it locked up in my head. i'm not much for reading and writing. (you'll see why soon)

i've just noticed living here that seems to be how it works. i fished on off here for a while, cause i liked back waters.. and well there arent any here really. theres the bay.. but that might as well be open ocean. so it took me some time to say "hey ok i want to fish here."

but this is the main area alot of fish come through to get into alot of back waters. and the MAIN travel path for them picks up right in the middle of the tides. and dies at high and low. one side is harbors and rivers.. the other open beach.. low tide on the beach side is amazing. high tide on the bay side is ok... could be better. the mid point there is alright too but it's closer to the main route in/out. but i know the rivers and i know they are in them by 2 hours before high until roughly 2 after. (honestly it depends more on the depth than the timing, i used to keep track by watching a depth marker on a pier. 9ft marked fishing time) i also know those rivers for the most part empty out almost completely. meaning the fish hafta go some where.

so recap.
low tide open beach = fish
"highway" between open beach and back waters = fish at mid tides
back waters = fish around high tide
its easy to see the travel patterns.

i think the key here for me with the low tide success is, there A WHOLE LOT of backwaters emptying out here. 4 good size rivers and numerous bays/harbors all emptying out at once. thats a whole lot of fish being forced out of their preferred feeding areas.

i also think of low tide as migration time. they swim up and down the coasts and where ever they happen to be at high tide determines what rivers they will be in. they hang out tin those rivers/bays till they get forced out, and then use the downtime of low tide to travel up or down the coast. (they hafta do it at some point right? cant migrate while in a river.)

and i'm not saying they aren't there at other tides. just greater bite numbers at those tides.


shipwrecked and xyzs might tell ya other wise.. and i kinda agree with them but their spot is about 400-500yrds away, and at high tide its a lovely rock outcropping. low tide it's far to shallow. of course i haven't caught anything there... but they swore by it. i've had some almosts there though on incoming.

(this is why i dont keep a log.. i'm scatter brained when it comes to writing. i'm a math guy. i see everything in my head and it all adds up nicely, the second i try to transfer it onto paper... it looks like einstien's chalk board. ok back to it.. )

i know theres so much more to it that i'm leaving out. and honestly theres only so much i wish to divulge in such a public forum. but there are so many spots along a clear cut route, that provide a bite at certain times. and if done right you can literally follow them from the rivers, into the harbors, down the shores of the bays, to that "highway" and out down the beaches and back again. if ya reallllly have that sort of time and gas money and determination (and access which is becoming a real pain). day or night doesn't seem to matter much, other than what you might use for bait.

storms however.. they have a much bigger impact. i am still trying to figure them out. so far all i got down is, hour before a thunder storm. i can find em during good storms though. gotta work on that this year. i cant figure out if they stay inside, or work certain areas outside when theres really rough surf.

i just had a very unlucky last season. i lost three bigguns. and i was always that witness to the biggun. so i know they are there and when.. just couldn't catch em. this year i will get em. spent alot of time out there last season and between what i witnessed, hooked up with, and heard about from my buddies boating excursions.. thats the pattern here. don't know if that will hold where ever you may be. for instance, i can't imagine that would work out on the islands. when the fish have very limited access to back waters. no place for them to empty out of really. down there i would imagine rocky areas of beach at high tide is the equivalent to back waters here. and since those really don't have a route the fish HAVE to follow out, it wouldn't really apply. :huh:

make sense to anyone but me?

i believe that most places are "tide specific",
as it relates to the necessary volume of water
available for our prey to predate. BIG FEESH require
just enuff water to hide and hunt and trap bait.

Certain spots are better at High, while other spots are unattainable.
The unreachables, and thier fortunes, become available at Low.

Tides, or water levels, imho relate most directly to the amount of structure that stripers can avail themsleves of to wait and predate thier forage in. Moons, current, forage, water temps, time of day/year, and the "highway" (as GCAB1 so aptly put it) are all contingent parts of the whole.

maybe we like to learn the tides and how they figure in, because they are one of the most predictable criterion and something we can read as we prepare for the surf ~separate from and before we read the water?? By knowing the tides we can choose the "right spot" that fits our fishing window for the "right time".

in my biggest producer, the bite is AWWWN or off dependent on how much water is where and for how long. And it's usually a 4 hour window, not counting The Change. Also, i LOVE fishing thru The Change from about 0200+ ~~especially on a New and within the three lights of Striper Dawn.

just sum of my views, gents, carry on! :) :) :)

GonnaCatchABig1,
You got a great memory. I think it's great that you can keep it all in your head. It sounds like you have cracked a fishing pattern....happy hunting! Personally, I need to write things down or I forget it. The seasons are starting to blend in together. "Old age" is infecting my brain cells.

BassDawg,
Well put. I agree.

Moving of the water, in and out. That's all.

Thanks, F360.

Still have so much to learn, about so many different spots and about
me one or two, Big producers, as they change from migration to migration.

Lawgs are ESSENTIAL, not only for old age as i am approaching 50 and feeling the memory fades, but also from the perspective of being able to document Established Conditions PATTERNS. it's not so much for the places that i know like the back of my hand and can put myself there everytime, when "i know" that the feesh are there. however, to learn the history of a spot ~thru the decades~ there is no substitue for recording the info into a concise and organized record.

Crazy Al says to write down the skunks AND the bites and swears by
diligent, accurate, and HONEST log keeping to put one in the right place at the right time. by doing so, one can greatly increase one's catch rate, as well as get the most out of one's window of STRIPER OPPORTUNITY.

Works for him, anyways, and he's tonged sum Big Beetches in his many, many, moons :fishin: :fishin: :fishin:

for me and shore fishing it means where I go.. droping tide spots... incoming tide spots.. oh and the ever so rare slack tide spot.

tidal paterns are without a doubt your best friend. Many estuarys river inlets and bays are prime examples, many of us move with the tide and enjoy sucess long after others have hung up the rods and called it a day!

What it means to me is spot specific.... where and when I fish a spot is totaly dependant on tide....then throw in the wind... maybe moon phase... but it all begins with the tide.

[QUOTE=GonnaCatchABig1;573929]nope.. i just keep it locked up in my head. i'm not much for reading and writing. (you'll see why soon)

SNIPPED!!!QUOTE]

Dude... aren't you the guy who can't even buy a fish???

[QUOTE=JFigliuolo;575529]i was from august till november... but that doesnt mean the others around me weren't catching, (plus i factored in previous years experience)

if you rely on concentrating solely on what yer doing, yer doin it wrong. every fish i have ever caught in my life i can attribute to knowledge gained through some one else. from learning how to use my first artificial (green tubebait, remember it like it was yesterday cause the first fish i caught on it was my personal best largemouth. whic isnt bad for a 7yr old) allllll the way to what i will be doing this year.
yup alot of trial and error is involved, and modifying other ideas or info. but ya can learn alot by watching the guy next to you. (especially when you were as bad a rut as me) you dont need to be catching the fish to study them. let some one else do the fun part, and relax.

after i put everything together that i observed last year... this year just you wait.. i'm gonna be all over them.

Fair Tide - A tidal current that is traveling on the same heading as your vessel.:hihi:

seriously...

Bob,
I recently did a presentation on tides, moon phase, current, and wind and how they all inter-relate and their affect on the surfcaster. Too much info to post here but I can shoot you the PowerPoint if you PM me your email address.
DZ