Came across a guy with a real nice Chittum Snake Bite 18 stuck in POC this AM. We were able to pull him across the shallow flat he was on into deeper water. He says he just moved the boat from FL. I welcomed him to the shallows of POC and explained that in POC there are two type of boaters. One’s that have been stuck and one’s that will get stuck.
Smack I told him about your low water pickup and gave him your contact info. He needs to get that thing fitted for the flats… Nice rig.
Good on ya. Aren’t tides running high everywhere right now? Even low tide around Freeport is higher than our normal tides. I actually think bull tides give people a false sense of confidence.
There’s still skinny water with bull tides…actually a lot more of the skinny and yes, people tend to think bull tides mean it’s deep everywhere!
Thank you sir. I’m doing an install on another Snake Bight in POC soon, I guess there’s at least two there.
We can all welcome this Capt to the walk of shame of pushing a skiff to deeper water…been there before and always have wading boots in the boat.
Might be the same guy? His first name is Randy. I sent the recommendation by text after I got in from fishing and he hasn’t replied yet. FYI
LOL, these bull tides get us venturing into the tidal flats that are dry a lot of the time. Barely enough water to pole and a hard bottom. I’ve had a couple of times where I came off plane and was rubbing my skiff’s belly in barely over ankle-deep water. My girlfriend’s first trip down here after I got my Challenger back from Mac, she was shocked to see us passing herons that were wading knee-deep (to them) on the sand. Makes you pucker up a little………….
Wasn’t me and I have a Mangrove lol.
I hit a beer can on the bottom down your way once on a bull tide. I was headed towards the island towards some marsh over there.
Flipped that boat around back towards the mansfield channel real quick 
Last week when I was down there I saw a guy running an area that used to be crossable but after the last big storm is extremely shallow. I told my buddy he’s about to get grounded - I was pretty far away but saw that boat come to an abrupt stop - they either got stuck or realized they couldn’t make it through that area.
The water has came down since that time, but it is really easy to get into some very shallow water quickly without realizing it there. About 15 years ago I had low light and was running a long ways to learn some areas - I saw a pretty big opening to a lake where I could save some time and cut across. I asked my brother his thought and he answered “What’s the worst that can happen?”
I ran about 50 yards onto ankle deep sand and the boat was stuck. I mean hard stuck. Had to remove all gear and cooler from the boat and push from the rear to get it out.
I’ve learned to take the long way from that point forward.
Y’all tell this Floridian what a “bull tide” is.
Exactly…POC is a place you need to run around when it’s super skinny so you know what not to do when it’s up like it is right now.
A lot of the Texas coast is marsh covered up by barrier islands. The inside marsh and bays are more similar to mosquito lagoon than what you’d be used to in a more tidal fishery.
A big change in water level in a day in a common bay in Texas would be 6” of water. There is very little tidal water movement on much of the marshlands in the coast. Most of the changes in water level is wind driven. So when the water comes in it comes in big time and stays that way for a few days until the wind switches again. Bull tides are when that water is high.
my house in Seadrift is a 15+ mile run by boat to a pass into the gulf. So it takes a long time for the water to move in and out.
And those high tides cover up oyster reefs that may not normally be exposed. I wan running the Refuge around the highest highs of last week and nearly all the reefs were just underwater. Without knowing where those are, that could be ugly.
I think it’s the same as a king tide DB.
Lot more bulls than kings in Texas
To give a visual to this, here is the tide prediction and actuals for a day I was in POC:
Blue is predicted and Red is actual. The delta between these two is called a “residual tide”
I mentioned that the water was high to an old timer down there and he said it was due to the full moon on equinox. True that the equinox brings the highest tides of the year, but tide predictions consider this. The highest tides from a full or new moon are typically a few days after the actual moon itself - there is a delay in the bulge of water the earth rotates through (tides are not water moving in and out, it is actually the earth rotating through the same bulge of water with high and low points due to gravity from the moon and sun).
So what caused this residual tide? A number of factors, but primarily wind. Leading up to the surge in water, there was a strong east onshore wind for several days:
That pushed a lot of water from the open bays from the east - the water from Matagorda gets pushed into the marsh area of POC. Further to the west near Aransas Refuge, the same happened to San Antonio bay pushing water pushing water into the narrows. There was nearly 16” more water than predicted in that area earlier that week.
This might be known and obvious to some, but it is one of the reasons that fishing the Texas coast is so challenging. The tide and ocean access is from channel cuts. Nearly all natural openings have been silted in. We may not get a lot of water movement due to tides, and only one high and low per day, so wind is something that has to be relied on to learn where higher and lower water will be.
Piggybacking on this ^^…. Where do you target when the water is up like it was? The tide movement is meaningless and the grass is way more flooded than a typical high tide. Are you trying to get back deeper into the marsh than is normally possible?
Find shorelines you can see fish on and start poling until you find them. They are out there! Usually the shorelines and back pockets that are too shallow to get close enough to pole are just about right with the extra water. I don’t pay attention to moon phase, tide movement or any of that noise. It doesn’t hurt to be aware of the variables but I don’t base trips on them.
@Smackdaddy53 pockets huh !!! Yeah I can think of one exact pocket on the first of the incoming that’s legit
