Show me a master snook angler and I'll show you a guy who reads the tide tables before breakfast and maybe again after dinner. He may forget his wedding anniversary, but he won't forget the date of the spring tides in May. (This may have something to do with the high divorce rate among snook fishermen.) No fish are more reactive to tidal flow than snook. They depend on the flowing water to bring food to them almost like rainbow trout in a mountain stream. When the water isn't moving, they rarely feed.
But there's a lot to learn besides what time of day high and low tides come in your fishing area. You know the basics: tides are very long, low ocean waves caused by the pull of the moon and the sun. They're not evident at sea, but when they hit land the motion of the waves causes the water to rise and fall, and also creates tidal currents as the water flows over shallows and through narrow passages. Anyone who spends any time around the coast knows this much. But the flow varies dramatically based on the shape of the land it meets.
PLAYING THE TIDES
Tide heights are listed in distances above or below the mean low tide at a given spot -- the "zero" line. The greater the variations from zero -- that is, the taller the wave -- the stronger the tide flow and usually the better the fishing.
However, you have to take what the tides give you, and a great snooker plays the ebb and flow like a master violinist working through a symphony. (Or maybe more like a banjo picker working through "Dueling Banjos".)
Tides follow wider, deeper channels first. In a bayou fed by several tidal creeks you may see that the inflow begins on the main arm and is already flowing strong there while it's dead or even going out on the smaller feeders.
Time your fishing to take advantage of this, hitting the big feeder first, then the smaller ones as they "wake up" and begin to flow. The best fishing in all these small passes, incidentally, is usually on the downtide side of the points, that is on the inside on incoming water and the outside on outgoing water. These spots create eddies that allow the snook to avoid the flow, yet easily pick off baits swirled in. And if there happens to be a pothole curving around the point, as there often is due to current scouring, you've discovered a super snook spot.
The tide comes into an estuary in a plume that you can see on the surface when the water is calm. It has a rounded leading edge, and it stays discrete for a time from the residual water left in the backcountry on the previous low--differences in salinity or temperature probably account for the edge. Baitfish often ride this plume, and as it passes a feeding station snook begin to strike.
THE PULSE OF THE ESTUARIES
Tides flow in cycles or pulses within their larger movements. Particularly on the rise there may be an hour of strong flow, then a lull of 30 minutes to an hour, then another several hours of strong flow all within a given incoming tide. These are the reverse flows that swell to become full outgoing tides on four-tide days, but in the interim they're simply hesitations in the incoming flow.
Falls tend to be more straight ahead, which is why they are stronger and often produce the best action of the day, but they also have occasional "periods" when they slow down.
The fish usually respond to these minor changes; you may have hot fishing on the start of the rise, then a dead time, then another maJor feed. And when all the water dumps out at once, going from say a plus 2.9 to a minus 0.40, over three feet of water has to get out of the back country in a period of 6 to 8 hours.
This means strong flows for a long period of time, and that means you'll have lots of opportunities to throw to fish that are in a feeding mode. (Note that "strong" flows in snook country are not anything like strong flows farther north along the Atlantic Coast, where tide ranges of 8 feet are common. We're talking relative flows here, not absolutes.)
