Seatrout tend to bite best on a moving tide, a few hours or so after a predicated low or high. Prevailing winds from a cold front could alter the timing and levels.
March 20, 2024
By David McGrath
I will never forget my first solo fishing trip on the Gulf. Anchored in calm seas, I was giddy, catching a chunky whiting with nearly every cast of a yellow jig off the back of my 18-foot boat.
When I finally turned toward the bow, I was startled by a wall of fog headed my way. By the time I weighed anchor and fired the engine, I was completely enveloped. Visibility was barely 20 feet and I landed the Sea Pro on the nearest beach and hiked across a golf course to get home.
When I returned for my boat the next day, it was leaning on its side, high and dry, 10 paces from the water. It took three days and a cram course in ocean tides before I could float and retrieve my boat at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday night.
Tide Tables Tide smarts can help you avoid trouble. It can also enhance fishing success.
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Tides, of course, refer to the rising and falling of the sea due to the daily gravitational pull of the moon and sun. Most coasts experience a cycle of two high tides and two low tides each day, which you can ascertain ahead of time by consulting the tide tables.
Oceanographers plot the monthly tide tables which are unique to each coastal area, due to differences in location, wind, weather, and topography. Local corrections (add or subtract time) are printed for tide times calculated for main “reference” stations. Here’s an example of how that works.
Look at the tide tables printed in the back of Florida Sportsman magazine. Let’s take Saturday, February 10, for example. For my region of Placida, which is based on the St. Petersburg tide reference station, a low tide of -.9 feet (almost a foot below the usual low water mark) occurs at 8:15 a.m., which is minus 43 minutes from the St. Petersburg low tide. That’s what anglers would call a “negative low tide,” and it can be a great time to fish potholes. Using the high tide correction factor, my Placida high tide, 1.2 feet, occurs at 2:39 p.m.
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A little farther south in Everglades City, the tides are more closely aligned with the reference station of Cedar Key. The low tide on the 10th at Everglades City occurs at 10:15 a.m., and again is a “negative tide,” dropping to 1.2 feet below the usual low water mark. High tide, 2.9 feet, comes at 3:46 p.m.
The two fisheries, Placida and Everglades City, share some similarities. For complex reasons, accounted for by NOAA tide prediction experts, there is greater vertical range of water movement at Everglades City: lows are lower, highs are higher.
Here’s what much of the Everglades looks like during winter lows. Don’t be stuck there at sundown! Catching the Tides Guides know that fish feed more actively in moving tides, so that the optimum time to catch them is the two-hour period before high tide or the two hours before lowest tide. They make sure their clients are in a favorable place to cast within each two hour window, such as at the mouth of a creek where marine organisms are being flushed into the bay on an outgoing tide. Or within casting range of a mangrove shoreline when an incoming tide draws in predators to gorge on marine life hiding in the roots.
Likewise, anglers may consult the tables to select the best days to go fishing each month on the basis of tidal coefficient, or the difference in height between a day’s high and low tides. Days with the highest coefficient (90-120) are best since the water level rises and falls a long way throughout the day, meaning more volume and current. On days with a low coefficient (20-50), meaning little or no flow, anglers may want to golf, instead.
Florida Sportsman’s tables make the choice easy, earmarking high coefficient days with a bold fish symbol—noted in the February 10 example.
Tide Smarts for Safety Checking tide tables is especially important when fishing in locations like the Everglades, Florida Keys, or inshore St. Augustine.
Everglades National Park comprises nearly 3,000 square miles of remote islands, mangrove coastlines, rivers, bays, sandbars, and hidden lagoons. Since it is notoriously shallow throughout, boats risk running aground or being stranded when the tide goes out. No cellphone service and no other boats in sight can mean an overnight stay!
Similar hazards exist in the Florida Keys. A friend and I used to cruise to a remote beach in the Content Keys, where we would wade and flyfish for mackerel, mangrove snapper, and barracuda. We made sure to wear a watch and evacuate before the swiftly outgoing tide would drop the water level three or four feet, potentially grounding our boat, marooning us for the next 12 hours.
St. Augustine is known for some of Florida’s highest tides, when water levels can drop 6 feet in a short amount of time.
Exceptionally high tides or “king tides” in the fall months can cause minor coastal flooding in some parts of Florida, particularly the lower east coast. Boat ramps may be unsafe at those times.
The moral of the story: Develop a tide table habit for better fishing and safer, stress-free boating.
