Salmonfly.Net Reviews - Issue 2

www.saltwatertides.com

Ok, you are probably thinking that this going to be all about reviewing a super  fly fishing site, right? Well this one is not, but it is a worthwhile site for all coastal fly fisherman to be aware of. I cannot tell you how often I have gone to this site to look up tides for a particular marine area that I am considering. Maybe at first it was because it was easy to find in the search engines, but now it is just saved as one of my favorites.

As you may well know, when you are fishing the estuaries, or near the mouth of rivers, knowing the high and low tide times can be critical. Anadromous fish often enter rivers on the incoming or outgoing tides. Sometimes, productive estuary waters can become nothing more than a few muddy tide pools. At other times, what used to be the semblance of a roiling stream headed to sea is backfilled by a tide moving in the opposite direction.  You can see the point. It is necessary to know the tides before making a trip.

Tide table booklets can be picked up at almost any sporting goods store, but if you are like me, they often get lost or thrown away. Besides, they are not very easy to read.  It’s nice to have tide tables available as a quick look up on the internet and that is what you can do at www.saltwatertides.com - a service that is provided to the reader without cost by Tide High and Low, Inc.¹

This nifty little site allows you to drill down from a U.S. tide regions to a specific site on an ocean shore or large tidal river (over 2500 of them). Look at the example below.

 (Tide High and Low, Inc., 2008)^2.

This is a screenshot of part of the page you see after clicking on Washington. As you can see, you are brought to the sub-regions of Washington tidal areas, in this case 6 of them. Those 6 are further broken down to 166 more sub-regions. All you do is select the area that you will be fishing in.

(Tide High and Low, Inc., 2008)^2.

Next you simply select the Month,  first day, and the number of days that you want to see. Press "get tides" and you have a neat little table of the tides that you selected.

(Tide High and Low, Inc., 2008) ^2.

Here, I am given the high and low tides for Henderson Inlet in Puget Sound for three days beginning November 11.  You can see, I hope, what a simple process this is.

If you have internet access, and need the tides quickly, this is one of the easiest ways to find them.

References

1. Tide High and Low, Inc. (2008). www.saltwatertides.com . Retrieved November 10, 2008, from www.saltwatertides.com: http://www.saltwatertides.com/

2. Screenshots from Tide High and Low, Inc. (2008). Regions with Tide Predictions. Retrieved November 10, 2008, from www.saltwatertides.com: http://www.saltwatertides.com/