Let's Talk Tide Times

Given the five year's worth of Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazines I have piled up, I can tell you that at least 80% of the articles have some mention about tides.  Some of the main takeaways are 1) slack tides are no good - you should go to a movie instead 2) high tides allow fish to get back into areas they don’t otherwise, and the list goes on and on.  Hundreds and hundreds of tips.

Then there’s tide info that’s very useful to know for your boat.  Have you ever anchored the boat, waded for a few hours only to return to your boat that is now beached (the tide went out)?  Or how about you anchored the boat, waded for a few hours only to return to the boat that is 6 ft deep now and it’s hard to get back in?   Yeah, me neither!  

There’s something I’ve discovered on my own when it comes to tides and I bet you have too.  Unlike feeding times which apply to basically the entire Texas coast, tide times are specific by tide station and require tide meters.  Makes sense, right?  

Here’s a picture of Aransas Bay and note there is only one tide station for the entire bay south of downtown Rockport.  The high tide today is 4:27 pm.  But that’s when high tide is right there at THAT station - south Rockport.   The station north of Rockport is all the way up in Aransas Wildlife Refuge.  So, what time would it be high tide at Spalding Bight?  Because we want to be there when it’s at its highest when the reds are stacked up in the back lakes.  Well, it’s hard to know.

When the app was built, this was one of the problems I wanted to solve.  Certainly not trivial to solve it, but after some research I implemented spline interpolation to get this information.  It uses some deep math to compute the times for a specific location given all of the tide stations closest to it.  So, in the app now when I click on Spalding Bight, I see this.

When I see dudes at the boat ramp and I overhear them say when high tide is, I think to myself they must be fishing near the tide station!  Because I can guarantee them it's not what they think it is wherever they are going.

This is valuable information that you can use to be where you want when you want.  Either safer on the water or prime time fishing conditions based on the tide time at that spot.  Spline interpolation for the win!