Passing along a little factoid I learned doing some research on tides. Anyone ever hear of the rule of 12 when it comes to tides? VERY useful, especially when you are fishing skinny! (this only works for non-Gulf of America folks sorry GOA fishermen!)
Tide cycles are generally 6 hours (sorry Gulf folks). In the first hour, the tide moves 1/12 of the full vertical distance it will eventually travel. In the second hour, it moves 2/12 (1/6th). In the 3rd and 4 hour, it moves 3/12 (1/4th). In the 5th hour, it’s back to 2/12, and in the 6th hour, it’s back to 1/12 - then it reverses course (falls/rises).
So, remember - 1, 2,3,3,2,1 - Got it? So how is this useful?
Tide cycles around me are about 6 feet. That makes calculating how fast the water will rise/fall very easy:
1/12 of 6 feet = .5 feet or 6 inches. so
First hour, tide rises by 6 inches
Second hour (2/12), tide rises by 12 inches (a foot).
Third hour (3/12), tide rises by 18 inches (Foot and a half)
Fourth hour (3/12) tide rises by 18 inches - foot and a half
Fifth hour, tide rises a foot
Sixth hour, tide rises 6 inches
Seventh hour . . . back down 6 inches and so on.
So, now when you are watching those oyster bars grow or shrink, you can predict how much more or less of them you will see in the next hour.
Very interesting! But since I fish the GOA, I can’t use it here. But thanks for sharing. This old dog loves to learn new tricks.
Zika, we often get only a couple of inches fluctuation down here in the LLM.
Wind obviously plays a big factor. But the other day on a redfish trip north of Tampa bay we lost about 8-12” of water in what felt like 45 mins at the bottom of the tide. I was poling potholes next to a few rocks under the water and about 3 shots later the are way out and I’m rubbing and poking for dear life to get off the flat.
Not a big outgoing, west wind should’ve pushed water in and not out. And I almost found myself high and dry for a few hours. The Gulf can be fickle lol.
Those GOA tides are so fricken confusing - went to college in St. Pete and never got my head around them - but at least they aren’t as big as those Georgia tides!
Oh, another tide fact that I never understood - Anyone ever wonder why the tides are so much higher in southern GA than they are in East FL, SC, and NC? Moon moves the same distance, pulls the same water . . ?
Look at a map - all that water moving across the Atlantic stacks up against the East Coast, hitting the land furthest east first (they get the lowest tidal swings), then gets funneled into areas that are the furthest West. Southern GA gets the combined funnel of SC and FL - thus the 10 foot tides.
Also why small islands (Bahamas, etc) have smaller tides - the water doesnt’ stack up on them, it just goes around them.
Okay, I’m done being a nerd here, back to getting stuck high and dry on tides that don’t do what they are supposed to.
