Technical Tackle

It won't fit in your tackle box and you’ll never want to get it wet, but your computer is as important as any lure, bait, or hook in your handy bag of fish-fetching tools and tricks. Here at CompuFish, we provide you with fully customized daily fishing alerts revealing which of your favorite spots are most likely to produce an impressive day’s catch.

Accomplished fishermen know that fishing is as much a science as it is chance, requiring knowledge and talent as well as a friendly wink from fishing fortune. Even if you were born with a certain angling acuity, be ready to confer with Mother Nature if you want to catch a hint where she might be hiding her elusive fishy treasures today.

A scientific analysis of nature reveals relevant facts about the moon, tides, wind and weather. Also, science can help locate your target fish by determining where the appropriate baitfish are most likely to feed. This is why your computer and CompuFish.com should be your daily fishing companion. Through scientific data, carefully analyzed from the angler’s angle, the detailed fishing alerts provided by CompuFish.com are almost like reading Mother Nature's mind.
 

The Tell-Tale Tide

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied. (John Masefield)
 

If you’re an angler, you can identify with the sentiment of this poem segment from, “Sea Fever” as you set out to face the cool early mist, navigating dark channels to your favorite morning moorings. An old proverb says, “Time and tide wait for no one." To be a serious fisherman, you will need to know about the time and the tides as both will influence where fish will be congregating and when they will be feeding.

About Tides

Tides are simply the rise and fall of the sea, causing it to flow toward the shore or recede from it. As one Thai Proverb puts it, “At high tide fish eat ants; at low tide ants eat fish.”

The greatest influence on the movement of our oceans is the Moon. The Moon’s influence causes an average of two high and two low tides (per day) in most parts of the world, but because the Moon rotates around the Earth the times of these tides vary about an hour later each day.

Sometimes the Moon and Earth line up with the Sun, causing a profound tidal event called a Spring Tide, not named for the spring season, but for its intense tidal response. Like unleashing a tightly coiled spring, the water is propelled toward the shore then pulled sharply back, resulting in extremely high, high tides followed by extremely low, low tides. Spring tides occur in concurrence with full and new moons.

During the quarter Moons, when the Sun and Moon are at right angles (rather than lined up), the tidal effect is minimal, resulting in relatively low, “high” tides and relatively high, “low” tides. During these “Neap Tides” the ants eat precious little fish, and vice versa.

Spring and Neap tides however, are only part of the story. Then there’s Perigee (when the Moon moves closer to the earth) and Apogee (when it is at its greatest distance). This occurs because the moon’s path is not a perfect circle, becoming quite oval at times.  

A Spring tide, in combination with a moon at its Perigee point, will result in the world’s highest and lowest tidal events such as those in the Canadian Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia known to reach 16m or approximately 52ft. The smallest tides in the world are in the Mediterranean where they swell to no more than 2-3cm (about one inch).

About Fish and Tides

 So why is uncle Joe banging the kitchen pots of the family’s old fishing cabin, waking everyone before the crack of dawn? Why are all the best fishing holes spotted with lone fisherman standing silently, waist high in rubber boots amid rising mist, lit only by the soft beams of dawn? It is the joyful coming of the tide and with it the treasures of the sea.

All night the thirsty beach has listening lain with patience dumb,
Counting the slow, said moments of her pain; now morn has come,
And with the morn the punctual tide again.

(Susan Coolidge – Flood Tide)

It is the ebb and flow of the tide that awakens our sleeping brackish communities. The tide, be it going out or coming in, moves the water, giving life to the sea. Much the same as a breath of fresh air restores Earth’s more landlocked citizens, the tide stirring the oceanic floor, loosens bits of plant and minuscule marine life thereby attracting tiny baitfish and the bigger fish that eat them, and the still bigger that eat them, and at last, men like your uncle Joe, dotting the morning shore in hopes of cooking up a seafood feast in the noisy pots and pans of the old family cabin.   

Watch the tides. The best fishing occurs before dawn and about two hours before dark. Fish feed in moving water where it is easy to find smaller baitfish feasting on the tiny food bits upturned by the tide. The poorest time to catch fish is the slack time between tides. It is a dormant spell when fish burrow into the sand (or mud) of the ocean floor or hide in utter stillness, deeply camouflaged by thick grassy marsh. The sea is napping, and the angler may as well be. When you, as the fisherman, understand this, it only makes sense to chart the exact timings of tidal movements, per location, throughout the day. That is how science, your computer and Compufish.com can revolutionize your fishing experience.