In
the Northeast, there is no other force that has such a pervasive impact on fish
than the tide. To understand why fish are where they are, and why they do what
they do, you should try to learn as much as possible about the tides in your
area.
First off, tides are caused by the gravitational pull of both the
Moon and the Sun. They are also subject to environmental variances, such as wind,
etc., which is why they call tide charts "predictions," not "schedules." Due to
the complex interaction of the pulls of both Sun and Moon, the heights of the
tides also vary. For example, over the next four months, the highest tide in Boston
Harbor will be 11.80 feet on September 8 at 18 minutes after midnight. Similarly,
the lowest tide will be -1.46 feet on September 9 at 7:23 a.m. That's a total
tidal swing of 13.26 feet, which makes a tremendous difference in the conditions
you will find on the water.
There is approximately a 6-hour difference between
high and low tide and daily the tides progress about an hour ahead. If it is high
tide today at noon, tomorrow it will be about 12:50. Due to this daily change,
you can expect that if the tide was high at noontime last Saturday, next Saturday,
it will be low. Also, if you encountered favorable conditions at your favorite
spot at sunrise today, in two weeks, you could reasonably expect the same sort
of conditions to exist.
So why does this tidal movement of water have such
an impact on the fishing? It does several things. Firstly, higher tides open new
areas to the fish to feed. Flats
that are fully exposed at lower tides become
covered with enough water that stripers are able to disperse across them foraging
for mussel beds, crabs, baitfish, etc. For a specific example, I would point to
Button Island in Hingham, which you can walk to for more than half the tide. Yet
it has produced fish over 40 pounds in the past couple years (not regularly, so
don't be in a hurry to plan a trip targeting that island specifically).
Phil
Collins, the Mad Kiwi (okay, they may be all mad, but that is another topic) points
out that one of his favorite techniques in New Zealand is to look around during
a daylight low tide for the holes grouper have dug in the bottom. Then he returns
at night, and casts to the same spots. This trick has netted him some very large
grouper over the years.
Additionally, the flow of tidal water creates strong
current flows, which in turn creates rips. Bass love rips. I won't say that big
bass are lazy, but they are certainly efficient (come to think of it, I too am
becoming more efficient as I age). They will find a spot where they can sit in
an eddy, perhaps behind a rock and wait for the bait to be swept down to them.
Not only can they conserve energy, but they also place themselves in a position
where they can capitalize on a concentration of bait. Simply put, they tend to
get more feeding opportunities when they feed in rips.
At lower tidal stages,
fish and bait tend to be more concentrated. You'll often find fish by working
the channel edges where water and bait is draining back off the flats. This is
a time when you may also find schools of larger bait like herring or bunker (menhaden,
pogie, etc.) getting balled up and marauded by linesiders.
The character
of the waters you fish changes subtly by the minute as the tide changes. Areas
that may hold fish on the outgoing tide between +8 and +7 feet,
may be very
unattractive to fish on the incoming tide at the same stage. Similarly, an area
like Blacks Creek will fish well for a particular window of time during a
particular
tide, such as 2-3 hours into the outgoing. You need to learn what stage of tide
works at the spots where you fish, keeping in mind that simply noting the time
of the tide may not give you a reproducible result, if you do not also pay attention
to the height of that tide. To put it more clearly, an area may fish well at 2
hours past the high on an astronomically high tide, yet on a lower tide, it may
fish well at 1 hour past the high.
Tides do not affect only fishing. As
Capt. Bill Smith has pointed out in the past, astronomically high tides in Boston
Harbor create navigational hazards as well. The action of an extra foot or so
of water is sometimes all that is needed to pull free some of the millions of
abandoned, rotting wood pilings that have accumulated in the harbor from nearly
400 years of use. These pilings have a nasty habit of floating just under the
water, where you can't easily see them, yet your prop or lower unit is sure to
find them. Astronomical lows are the perfect time to drive around on scouting
trips. You will find hints of structure that you would never see otherwise. A
smart angler will use these tides to mark areas to investigate later.
Seasoned
mariners also realize that the combination of an onshore wind and an outgoing
tide at the Merrimack River or North River can produce deadly
consequences.
Large standing waves can build at the mouth, which makes it dangerous and all
too often deadly. These are the times you should consider
diverting to another
port or riding out the weather offshore until the turn of the tide. This point
was unfortunately made the hard way this week as an
angler lost his life at the mouth of the Merrimack.
Captain
John Bunar of Skippy III Charters relates this information to the Plymouth
area:
Just to add some local color to what
Mark had to say about tides. In the Duxbury/Plymouth area, there are many areas
that only produce action
during small windows of the tide. A fishermen can
catch fish pretty much every time out if he learns the general "laws" of the bays.
On
dead lows and especially minus tides, it is best to work the weedy edges of Guzzles
and secondary channels. These areas show well on a chart so
making a plan
before you go fishing will keep you effort organized. When the water starts to
come up of those edges with the incoming tide, The most consistent fishing I have
found is up on the shallow, patchy grass flats often adjacent to the guzzle or
channel edge I have been fishing. Some of the clear water sand flats towards Cordage
Park offer up sight fishing so they can we worth a shot as well. Keeping your
offering on or near the surface during this stage of the tide seems to produce
best and keeps you from constantly removing salad from your lure or fly.
As
the half tide passes, I think it is best to think about fishing some of the shoreline
structures like the rocks at Gurnet Pt or some of the cuts in the
marsh behind
Clarks Island. The marsh areas are especially interesting because they offer so
many little nooks and crannies where a fish may be
holding. Other areas to
try this type of fishing are the Jones River in Kingston and the Bluefish River
in Duxbury. My opinion is that it is best to fish these types of areas through
the high tide.
As the water starts
to recede from the bay, some of the feeding spots are obvious. Early in the season,
areas like the Saquish and Kingston rips are no brainers. As the season works
it's way through June, a fisherman needs to locate and fish the more subtle flows
and rips. My best advice here is to scan a chart for areas where you think the
tidal flow will be compressed or accelerated by the geography of an area. An example
of this would be the point of Plymouth Beach. There are many high sand bars that
effect current in the bays - fish use almost all of these areas on the outgoing.
Captain
Wayne Frieden of Reel-Dream Charters forwarded this:
Captain
John Bunar of Skippy III Charters reports:
Captain
Charles Crue of Channel Edge Charters reports:
Last
Saturday my clients, Ed and his son, Tom, did well. They used flies and soft baits
to get many stripers including a couple of keepers (which they released). Tom
not only caught his largest striper but his largest fish of any kind. Ed had his
leader break as a large fish hit the fly near the boat. He was only using 8-pound
test tapered leader on his fly rod. I switched him over to 15-pound fluorocarbon
for the remainder of the trip. The way the fishing has been this season the small,
medium and large stripers can be mixed in a given area so it is best to be prepared
for the big guys.