[adammus]

My boating experience in British waters is not great yet, so am trying to understand when is the best moment to catch fish from a boat.
As I know if water doesn't flow (slack) fish won't take the bait.
Last time I fished in West Bay high tide was 11.19 in the morning (neap tides).

Low	04:27	1.49m
High	11:19	3.41m
Low	16:40	1.67m
High	23:41	3.15m

We did catch plenty of fish between 10.45 and 14.00 o clock. The best time was roughly 12.00-12.30. Then after 2 PM takes stopped.
What time roughly was slack water? At the top of the tide which was 11.19?
I understand that during spring tides, when water flows much stronger fishing is the best?
Does fishing depend on drifting speed, wind direction etc as well? About 2PM wind picked up to 9mph and changed its direction from N to NW, W.

Please help me to understand it better.

Cheers!

 

[dicky]

So many variables. It's not just about tide size, wind direction and air pressure are a factor and it will be different from place to place and species targeted.

 

[JonD]

Many of the spots I fished in the UK were hard to fish in full tide, so had to be fished around the turn of the tides. Once in full flow I would move to inshore more sheltered areas. It wasn't so much as the perfect tide but more to do with the perfect locations to suit conditions. Some places over very shallow reef worked best in very fast running currents for bass.

Something that can play a big part is air pressure and if this is heading in the wrong direction many species will shut down to a certain degree. Have a bit of look at a few threads like these

The Weather Effect Pt 1 – Barometric Pressure – Social Fishing

https://www.oceanbluefishing.com/magazine/understanding-your-barometer-and-barometric-pressure/

Good charts such as the reveal or G3 vision charts make life so much easier than years ago. Using these you should be able to go from spot to spot working tides and depths to the full advantage. No good heading to a wreck in 100m of water in full tide, just like it would be no good targeting bass over a shallow kelp reef at low when the reef is exposed etc.

 

[boyscott]

I'm not sure if its the same in all areas. As you know there is a double high tide phenomenon at Poole which makes planning around the tides more difficult. Sometimes the published times are way out so it doesn't go as expected. There are also back eddies such as at Ballard and St Albans where at certain times the tide goes in the opposite direction to the overall E-W trend. But it gets more predictable the further offshore you go. You can get an atlas of tidal streams but the one I have is such a large scale that it doesn't show much fine detail.
My general rule of thumb is that if anchored the hour or so either side of HW or LW is likely to produce more bites but its often quiet at dead slack. When the tide is hammering you can still catch fish but less consistently although I'm not sure if its to do with holding bottom, weed etc or the fish behaviour.
Its certainly better to have some movement when drifting and between 0.5 and 1.5 kts seems ok for plaice etc though wind against tide isn't good. I don't have much experience of bassing on the drift but I think it works even in several knots if the fish are on.
Cheers

 

[toerag]

Get yourself a tidal atlas, without that you're just guessing. In my experience, the faster the tide the bigger the fish for bass. The same probably applies to pollack and coalies, but as you'd normally be wrecking for them you'll lose a lot of gear on peak flow. Predatory flatfish (turbot & brill) liked a tide between 1.5 and 2.5 knots. You can catch them drifting faster, but it's not so easy to fish. Going slower and you start to get too many dogfish. I liked a slight wind against tide for wrecking for ling and cod as you can trot the gear back into the wreck a bit and hook them before you're on the wreck. Bass are happy feeding in 6 knots of tide.

 

[Salar]

Fish don't read the rule book. My most spectacular bass catch was at slack tide, when as we all know bass don't feed! This year I have found the bream go crazy for about 45 minues just after complete slack, and go off the feed as soon as the tide picks up speed. I have had four trips where this happened, zero bites then 18-20 fish then zero bites again.

 

[adammus]

Get yourself a tidal atlas, without that you're just guessing. In my experience, the faster the tide the bigger the fish for bass. The same probably applies to pollack and coalies, but as you'd normally be wrecking for them you'll lose a lot of gear on peak flow. Predatory flatfish (turbot & brill) liked a tide between 1.5 and 2.5 knots. You can catch them drifting faster, but it's not so easy to fish. Going slower and you start to get too many dogfish. I liked a slight wind against tide for wrecking for ling and cod as you can trot the gear back into the wreck a bit and hook them before you're on the wreck. Bass are happy feeding in 6 knots of tide.

I know everything I need about tides, always know what tide is on a day I go out etc, but the question is when is the best moment to have the biggest chance to catch a fish.

 

[adammus]

Fish don't read the rule book. My most spectacular bass catch was at slack tide, when as we all know bass don't feed! This year I have found the bream go crazy for about 45 minues just after complete slack, and go off the feed as soon as the tide picks up speed. I have had four trips where this happened, zero bites then 18-20 fish then zero bites again.

We did catch plenty of bream at slack water that day so I decided to write this thread haha 😁

 

[toerag]

This year I have found the bream go crazy for about 45 minues just after complete slack, and go off the feed as soon as the tide picks up speed. I have had four trips where this happened, zero bites then 18-20 fish then zero bites again.

Bream tend to move through areas, it may not have been a tide thing, but merely a 'passing through' thing. It may be that they always pass through at a certain state of tide - read 'hooked on bass' and you'll learn that bass do this.

 

[toerag]

I know everything I need about tides, always know what tide is on a day I go out etc, but the question is when is the best moment to have the biggest chance to catch a fish.

I take the view that many predatory fish wait for their food to be pushed to them, and they require the tide to be running to do so. The harder the tide runs the bigger the baitfish are that cannot cope with it, and hence the bigger the predators are that feed at that point in the tidal cycle. Slack water allows fish to wander around at will instead of trying to find shelter or 'tidal feeding' opportunities, thus different sorts of mark bathymetry will attract fish for different reasons at different states of tide. Many things are consistent though, so if you can find one mark fishes in a certain way, similar marks often fish in a similar way.

 

[haddog]

2 hours after high and 2 hours after low as a general rule of thumb, with 2 hours after high being the better of the 2

 

[cloutie]

know everything I need about tides,

Then I must ask why you then need to ask when slack water is!??

 

[adammus]

Then I must ask why you then need to ask when slack water is!??

To force you to ask hahaha 🤣 Next please 😎

 

[Salar]

Bream tend to move through areas, it may not have been a tide thing, but merely a 'passing through' thing. It may be that they always pass through at a certain state of tide - read 'hooked on bass' and you'll learn that bass do this.

Different locations on those four trips, so that would be an amazing coincidence.

 

[Clinker]

I have turned my head inside out trying to work out what marks work best at what states of tide and and with just a few exceptions (I've never caught a tope at slack tide, but I don't do enough tope fishing to know that's a hard and fast rule), and have come to the conclusion that fish don't really play by the rules

 

[Steveh24]

If I knew when the fish were going to feed on each mark I would fill the boat every trip, sadly I don't and that's because the fish feed at different states of the tide depending on the size of the tide, although the one thing I can say fishing in my part of the English Channel is that the Ebb tide is a lot more productive then the Flood and I used to make notes when I caught fish, the size of the tide, the time, the weather, water temp, air pressure etc, but fish are fickle and I often found that this didn't always help, although I'm sure that overfishing by the commercial boats isn't doing the pleasure angler any favours.

 

[Malks]

Slack water can be before or after high/low water depending on your location in the UK.
As someone said above look at the tidal atlas for your area, you can then target different fish and use different tactics for times of slack water.

 

[drewsephine]

Fish will feed at :
06:00 - 08:00
11:30 - 13:00
17:00 - 19:30

Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Simples

 

[Steveh24]

Fish will feed at :
06:00 - 08:00
11:30 - 13:00
17:00 - 19:30

Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Simples

Hold on, you can't just put the times they are going to feed for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we need to see a full menu