Planning a shore session around the tide

Fish move with water. On most shore marks the depth over a given piece of ground changes by metres in a few hours, and with it what is reachable, what is feeding, and whether the ground you want to fish is even underwater. A mark that is excellent two hours before high water can be dead at low water and dangerous at the wrong moment on a flood, and none of that is visible from the car park.

So the useful unit for planning is the state of the tide, not the time of day. "Three hours up on a big tide" describes a set of conditions; "Saturday afternoon" describes your diary. Experienced shore anglers plan the first and fit the second around it, which is most of why their results look like luck.

The same information is what keeps you safe. Being cut off by a rising tide, and being caught by a swell on a rock mark, are the two ways this hobby kills people, and both are entirely predictable from a table you can read in five minutes.

What the numbers mean:

• High water and low water times — Two of each in roughly twenty-five hours, so each one arrives about fifty minutes later than the day before. This is why a mark that fished well on Saturday morning wants a different time on Sunday.
• Height, in metres — How much water there will be at that moment relative to a chart datum. The difference between the high and low figures is the range, and range is what actually matters for a mark.
• Springs and neaps — Around new and full moon the range is largest — spring tides, which run faster and go further out and further in. Around the quarters the range is smallest — neaps. Some marks want the run of a spring; others are unfishable on one. This is local knowledge and it is exactly what a tackle shop will tell you.
• The port it is for — Tide tables are published for specific ports and your mark may be an hour or more different. Use a table for the nearest secondary port rather than the nearest big city, and use a trusted source rather than the first search result.

A rough rule for how the water moves through the cycle: it rises slowly in the first hour after low water, fastest around the middle of the flood, and slowly again approaching high water. That middle period is when the ground covers quickly, and it is when people get caught out — not because the tide came in unexpectedly, but because it came in three times faster than it had been doing when they last looked up.

1. 1

   Step 1: Ask locally what state the mark fishes

   Before anything else. A tackle shop, a club, or somebody on the beach will tell you in one sentence what no general source can: whether this mark is a flood mark or an ebb mark, whether it wants springs or neaps, and what the ground does. This is the highest-value five minutes in the whole hobby.

   You will know it worked when: A target window rather than a guess.

2. 2

   Step 2: Work backwards from that window to an arrival time

   Allow time to walk in, set up, and get bait ready before the window opens rather than during it. Arriving at the start of the good period and then spending forty minutes rigging up is the commonest way to waste a well-planned session.

   You will know it worked when: Fishing when you meant to be fishing.

3. 3

   Step 3: Decide your leaving time before you go, and write it down

   Not "when it gets uncomfortable" — an actual time, based on when your exit route covers or when the swell will be running onto the rocks. This is the single most important line in the plan and it is the one that gets improvised away in the moment.

   You will know it worked when: A decision made calmly rather than in a hurry.

4. 4

   Step 4: Check the weather and the swell separately from the tide

   They are different things and a calm forecast can coincide with a big swell left over from weather two days away and hundreds of miles off. On a rock mark the swell is the number that matters more than the wind.

   You will know it worked when: A realistic picture of the sea rather than of the air.

5. 5

   Step 5: Tell somebody where you are going and when you will be back

   Ordinary practice for anybody going to a remote coast alone, and it costs a text message.

   You will know it worked when: Somebody notices if you do not come back.