Tides for fishing explained

Tides are the slow rise and fall of the sea. They come from the pull of the moon’s gravity on the oceans and, about half as strongly, the sun’s.^[1] For an angler they change two things through the day: how much water covers a flat, a bar or a creek mouth, and which way and how fast the water moves.

Two highs a day, most places

Most coasts get two high tides and two low tides a day.^[2] On the US East Coast the two highs are usually close in height (a semidiurnal tide); on the West Coast one pair is often bigger than the other (a mixed tide); and parts of the Gulf of Mexico get only one high and one low a day (a diurnal tide).^[2]

The tide keeps the moon’s time, not the clock’s. The moon comes back over the same place every 24 hours and 50 minutes, a lunar day, and on a coast with two highs a day they come 12 hours and 25 minutes apart.^[3] That’s why the tide is later every day, and why last week’s good morning tide is an afternoon tide now.

Spring tides and neap tides

Around the new moon and the full moon the sun, the moon and the Earth are nearly in line, and the tide’s range is at its biggest: higher highs and lower lows. These are spring tides, and the name has nothing to do with the season. Around the first and third quarter moons, when the moon looks half lit, the sun and moon pull at right angles and the range is smallest: neap tides. Each comes twice a month.^[5]

A spring high tide reaches farther up the shore and a spring low drains farther out, so the same flat can be under more water, or dry, compared with a neap week.^[5] Anglers who fish flats and marsh edges often plan their week around that.

Moving water: flood, ebb and slack

As the tide rises the current floods, toward the land; as it falls it ebbs, back toward the sea. In between comes slack water, when the current stops for a short time as it turns.^[4] NOAA notes that slack generally comes around high or low tide.^[4] Where a current station is near your spot, use its own predicted times rather than assume.

Many inshore anglers like moving water. They plan to be on a spot for the hours around a tide change, fish where the current sweeps past a point, a rip or a creek mouth, and use slack water to move or retie.

Reading a tide table

• Heights. US tide predictions count from Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW): the average of each day’s lower low tide, over a long reference period. It’s the level used for US tide predictions and nautical charts.^[6] A height below zero is lower than that average, so a minus tide uncovers more of the shore.
• Times. Read them in the station’s own time zone, and check whether the table has moved to daylight time.
• The station. Tides change along a coast and up a bay or a river. Use the station nearest your spot, and treat a station far up an estuary, or one predicted from another station’s offsets, as approximate.
• The weather. Tide tables predict the tide from the moon and sun. They can’t predict what wind, air pressure and river flow do to the water level, and that’s often a lot.^[7]

Tides in HuntGrid Fishing

In HuntGrid Fishing, turn on Tide stations under Conditions in the map’s layers and tap a station for its sheet: the predicted curve for the week with day, twilight and night shading and when the moon is up, the coming highs and lows, and NOAA’s observed water level where the station measures it. The Tide clock in Fish Mode and on Today shows the height now, whether it’s rising or falling and the time to the next turn at the nearest station. Tidal currents draws flood and ebb arrows at NOAA’s current stations, and each catch you log on salt water keeps the tide it was caught on.

The app predicts tides on your phone from NOAA’s harmonic constants, so stations you’ve saved keep working offline. They aren’t NOAA’s official predictions, and they’re not for navigation. Our free tide tables show the same predictions for US stations, with no account. In Canada, the official predictions come from the Canadian Hydrographic Service. More on tide charts in the app.

Sources

The facts and figures above come from these official pages, read on October 17, 2026. The words and drawings are ours.

1. What causes tides? (Tides and water levels tutorial), NOAA National Ocean Service
2. Types and causes of tidal cycles, NOAA National Ocean Service
3. The lunar day, NOAA National Ocean Service
4. Tidal currents (Currents tutorial), NOAA National Ocean Service
5. What are spring and neap tides?, NOAA National Ocean Service
6. Tidal datums, NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services
7. West Coast Operational Forecast System: southern California, NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services