I have found it difficult to successfully fish the extreme tides associated with the full moon.
(Redfish mainly)
I would appreciate any input, specifically:
Should I focus my fishing on the areas that flood (flats) during these tides instead of the areas I normally fish?
Even at low tide, I find it difficult to catch fish. Is it because the fish are full and not hungry?
Was this past full moon phase a particularly strong moon causing an excessively higher tide?
Where can I obtain information about upcoming full moon tides to know which ones are going to be higher than normal?
Any other information or tips would be appreciated?
I think that when the moon is this strong they do their major feeding at night when the moon is overhead and a minor feed when the moon is opposite. For instance today, I would expect the best bite between 0300 and 0500, the second best roughly the same time in the afternoon, but a half hour later. Both of those feeding times happen to be at low tide today where I am, so that would be the times to fish.
Not saying you can’t catch them at other times, but that would be the best time to focus on.
I fish from a kayak/canoe and think that fishing the flood tides for tailing reds is one of the funniest things to do on the water, and have some experience with it. As to your first question, you should definitely fish the flats that only are flooded with extreme tides. Look at the marsh grass, you want to be in areas that have the short grass as opposed to the long. This grass has a harder bottom and is an indication that its normally dry there. The area that I fish is completely dry except for a few days during the month and even when it does flood it is still very shallow, I’m talking less than 6 inches in places.
About the low tides, I’m not sure, that’s a difficult question to answer, could be lots of things, perhaps it’s that during these flood tide days the low tides are much higher than they would be on a regular day.
Yes, this past moon phase was a very strong one and we had great height over 6 ftt.
My favorite website to obtain info for fishing is http://www.tides4fishing.com/us/south-carolina/charleston
It has loads of valuable info about tides, wind, and barometric pressure, etc. use the sidebar to look at different days tide heights. If you Google Charleston tide graphs you will also find nice visuals for the heights of the tides during each month.
I find that the best flood tides to fish are when the peak high tide occurs between the 6-9pm hour. The fish are naturally eating at that time of day and the shallow water that you will be fishing it heats up very fast during the mid day sun. During dusk the fish seems to be all over.
And lastly I recommend using a weighted offset shank hook rigged weedless with any of Berkley Gulp product. You can find the hooks a Hadrell’s and when rigged weedless the action looks great and you can cast right into the grass. Hope this helps.
