Quickly Decipher Tidal Impact to Catch More Coastal Largemouths

A seam in the rushing water near the bank gave away the exact spot. I tossed a Devil’s Horse toward the current break and watched its propellers spin and cause a subtle disturbance as I imparted life to the lure with my rod. On the pause following the customary three twitches, a largemouth bass took and sunk the artificial as if it had been suddenly struck by a torpedo. Mistaking the lure for a frog or another surface-disrupting creature, the fish grabbed with gusto and the battle was on.

That bass wasn’t huge but, at nearly 3 pounds, it was a nice one for North Carolina’s Northeast Cape Fear River. While the ensuing bout was short-lived, the result was pretty satisfying because I’d only recently found the perfect piece of cover behind which the day’s first fish had been waiting in ambush. During a low-tide period just a couple of days before, I’d seen the submerged cypress-tree trunk half-buried in the sandy bottom near the bank and committed it to memory.

TIDAL WATERS CONUNDRUM

Consistently catching decent bass in a coastal river influenced by tides is a noteworthy accomplishment. And though the search for fish can test your patience and your expertise, anglers who go with the flow and learn to use the tides to their advantage can come up with a game plan that pays off more often than not. Bass populations in coastal rivers can be quite unpredictable, with numbers sometimes fluctuating considerably from one year to the next. A droughty spring may cause saltwater to intrude far up a river, creating poor spawning conditions that wipe out an entire year’s bass class by derailing reproduction. Too much rainfall can create flood conditions that also impact the spawn negatively.

Large populations of stunted fish rarely occur, however. Adult bass can survive prolonged adverse conditions by moving upstream and downstream for miles until they find favorable water chemistry and clarity. And they can still grow fairly large due to the limited number of counterparts competing for forage and the appropriate dwelling. An exceptional bass in the Northeast Cape Fear River weighs 4 to 6 pounds, but other tidal rivers may produce heavier fish.

A severe flood can push bass well upriver and back into the swamps for days. Anglers then have a tougher time catching fish because they’ll be “up in the trees” even during the lower tides. Waiting until the river returns to more normal levels is usually the best strategy, as that’s when the fishing is most productive.

ONLINE ANSWERS

The quickest way to learn the best water elevations for fishing is by visiting the NOAA National Water Prediction Service website and the NOAA Tides and Currents website to check the water levels along the river reaches you want to fish. Knowing the correct fishing elevations and channel depths, and when the water levels allow access to boat ramps, is a good start to the process of learning a river.

NOAA Water Prediction Service Gauges are located at various places along a river to provide water-level predictions based on rainfall data. Some rivers have several gauges (the Northeast Cape Fear has three), and most have at least one. NOAA Tides and Currents’ tables and graphs provide the projected times and heights of high and low tides at specific stations commonly named after beaches, river mouths, harbors, navigation channels or cities. For instance, the nearest station for the Northeast Cape Fear is Wilmington. The graphs make it easy to understand tidal rhythms.

IN-PERSON RECON

After your online due diligence, a scouting expedition is in order. Begin by navigating the river at high tide, checking for structure while the tide falls, noting any sunken trees, exposed root systems, sandbars, channels and all other bass-holding features. Taking a cell phone photo of any fishy-looking cover and its surroundings can be helpful for locating the area again should a high tide hide it when you go fishing. Cruising the river during the lower tide stages is also important, as it will reveal otherwise-submerged stumps, logs and other natural or man-made structures, as well as safe avenues of approach and navigation. It’s wise to refrain from operating your boat at high speed until you’ve identified all hazards that could damage the hull or the engine’s lower unit, and you have a handle on the level of water that will enable you to go over them unscathed.

During recon, it’s also significant to pinpoint falling-water outflows. A creek or ditch, no matter how small, concentrates invertebrates and baitfish, along with the bass that eat them. A falling tide forces aquatic creatures to retreat from the backwaters to deeper areas of a river’s larger creeks or main channel, and bass are bound to hang close to these confluences hoping for an easy meal or two.

Anglers should cast all around tributary mouths, along the banks upstream and downstream, and around any visible shoreline cover or submerged structure. Most of the structure will be woody in nature, but pad beds and floating aquatic plants may also occur in low-flowing oxbows, at sandbars downstream of creek mouths, at the downstream ends of islands and along broken shoreline edges fallen from the banks. Boat docks are not usually as abundant as natural cover. Still, anglers should cast to any man-made structures and flood-damaged remnants.

FISHING-TIME PREDICTIONS

Determining the time difference between the beginning of a falling tide at the river’s mouth and at various points upstream is paramount. Lag times tend to vary with depth and distance, and it behooves each angler to identify the prime fishing areas during the first two to three hours of the falling tide.

Tidal influence extends many miles upriver. The father upstream, the lower the tidal range, which is the height difference between the high and low tides. Although the range may not be as great and the channels may not be as deep as they taper off upstream, the fish usually still bite best during the first half of the falling tide.

As your game plan begins to take shape, the goal is to “chase the tide.” Therefore, your fishing day should begin downstream where the tide is high and starting to fall. If the initial spot doesn’t pan out or the fish stop biting, head upstream to the next fishing spot where the tide has just started to fall. Then go on to the next spot and so on. The ideal tide stage occurs at different times at different places, often over the course of half a day in the southern U.S. But longer rivers can provide opportunities to fish a falling tide even longer.

The only way to learn a river’s rhythm is by being on the water and taking notes. Keeping tabs on the river gauges will tell you when you should go based on the daily water-level predictions. Timing of the high and low tides at each potential fishing location must be determined by observing the actual rise and fall of the tides in relation to the tide-prediction tables for the nearest station downstream.

CELESTIAL AND BAROMETRIC INFLUENCES

Keep in mind that the water’s high and low elevations change incrementally with the growing and waning gravitational pull of the moon and the sun as Earth rotates and it and the moon follow their orbits. Tide elevations and ranges will also change based on rainfall and other atmospheric conditions.

Both high- and low-pressure weather systems can impact the daily tide range, causing water to rise higher or fall lower than tide charts predict. High barometric pressure depresses water levels while low barometric pressure raises water levels. The difference may be only a couple of inches or more than a foot, but it definitely alters the timing and heights of the tides, thereby impacting the fishing. The closer to the river mouth, the more pronounced the effects will be because the tide range is greatest where the river’s channel is deepest and closest to the ocean. The best course of action is to hedge your bets and time your arrival to the first fishing spot about 30 minutes before a high tide to guarantee you won’t miss the start of the falling tide.

The greatest tidal ranges occur during the full- and new-moon periods, which is when the high tides are higher and the lows are lower than usual. If I were to pick the best fishing days solely on the predicted daily tides, it would be during those periods—frequently referred to as lunar, astronomical or king tides—which occur in cycles lasting three to five days. The peak high tides then flood the backwaters, urging bass to enter them in pursuit of baitfish. The ensuing falling tides also attain their lowest ebbs and strongest outflows, concentrating the baitfish and bass in deeper-than-usual areas.

ALLURING SELECTIONS

A good rule of thumb when picking artificials for tide-influenced rivers is to match the lure type to the water’s height. That means using a topwater at high tide, a shallow-running stick bait when the water drops a bit and a crankbait or spinnerbait once the tide falls to about mid-range. If the fishing is productive enough to compel me to stick around in hopes of prolonging the bite, I switch to bumping the bottom with a soft-plastic lure on a Carolina or Ned rig before moving upstream to my next spot.

If you’d rather not keep reaching for different offerings, consider using a jig with a twist-tail grub. This versatile lure performs well at all water levels because it imitates a shrimp, an easy prey that bass in tidal rivers are quite familiar with. Anglers who also spend time targeting inshore saltwater species may have other suitable alternatives in their tacklebox. Chances are, if a speckled trout will gobble up a certain artificial, so will a largemouth bass.

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• This article was featured in the November 2024 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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