Predicting tides accurately

[seasponge]

Hi guys,

I'm a total newcomer to this fishing caper but dead keen to make the most of it. I mainly fish the Hawkesbury around Brooklyn and am still trying to learn the tricks of what works there.

Everyone says to fish the tide changes (with opinions supposedly divided on the outgoing, ingoing, high or low). But my question is how do you accurately predict the tide times?

I use the Willy Weather tide webpage, and look up tide times for Hawkesbury River (bridge, Dangar Island, Patonga), and I'll plan my fishing trips around it. But when I get out there, the tide doesn't seem to be moving in accordance with the predictions, and it seems to me the change of tide can be out by an hour or two. So far I haven't been able to find any consistent pattern.

Wondering whether I should be getting my tide info from elsewhere, are there peculiarities of the Hawkesbury I should be aware of, or am I just bad at reading the water?!

thanks,

Nick

[stevefish]

The old hawkesbury tide is a strange beast. I presume from the nature of the question you have a boat.

the ocean tides are fairly straight forward, they rise for 6 hours then fall for 6, give or take.

Now imagine a sink of water (the ocean) with a bottle in it(the river). The ocean/sink water rises and falls but even when it starts to fall, there is water still flowing through the small opening in the end of the bottle. At some point the bottle is level with the sink and it starts to flow the other way. And then you add different tide height combinations, so two tides of the same height behave differently due to the previous tide. Then there is the natural flow of the river to complicate things again. So the tide change can occur between 30 minutes and 2 hours late, at Brooklyn.

Then, just to really confuse things,you will find the water travels at different rates and even directions at different depths.

So after you have worked that out, then you can work out the best time to fish.

[seasponge]

Thanks for the reply Steve. Kind of reinforced what I was suspecting. Doesn't make it easy to plan a trip!

Are tide predictions (eg Willy weather) based on calculations, or are they based on actual observations? Is it reasonable to rely on them, or is it as reliable as forecasting temperature and rain?

If anyone has any tips on Hawkesbury tides, I would love to hear them.

[mii11x]

mate I use willy weather and while the high tide time is considerably accurate for where I fish, the low tide is about an hour different......I know this now so I use my knowledge of this to fish the low tide more accurately. Remember when the tide changes the water simply just does not stop in a vertical line from top to bottom like a brick wall, it will circulate a little. When I fish high tide I often notice the top water is running out, but the lower portion of the water column still runs in. I know this because the water level on a nearby wall keeps rising, but the top of the water column seems to be running out and also because my lures travel running in where as the top water seems to be running out.

You said you have noticed an hour or so difference, so plan your fishing around your knowledge of the system and your referred tide times for the area you fish. By the way, they are predictions like you have mentioned.

[Guest no one]

Doesn't make it easy to plan a trip!

Plan an all day trip! Problem solved