Moon questions

[Mahmoud Salem]

Good day

As I'm trying to give more time to GT popping, so I'm doing my best to do more planning
And as most agree that GT activity is best with strong currents, and strongest currents happen at new andfull moon

I don't know much about the moon current relation ship during the day, all I know is that high tide is when moon is at 12 and 6 positions and low tide is at 3 and 9 positions, and that current is almost zero around reversing from high to low and vice versa

But when does the strongest currents occur, is it midway between 1 and 3 positions or what?

Thanks in advance
Mahmoud

[Mark Harris]

The strongest currents are not AT full and new moon..... normally 2 to 4 days afterwards.  If you look at a tide chart you will see that the biggest tidal ranges tend to be 2-4 days after the top of a moon phase.

It is then a question of the velocity of the tidal movement on those days.  In broad brush terms this would often be between 2 and 4 hours after the low tide and high tide.

This is the case at sites where I fish most regularly anyway. It might be a little different from location to location.  As for the best times to fish for GTs during all of that.. you can figure it out yourself I am sure .

And, you will find plenty of people who say that the strong current after full or new moon are the worst times to fish.

[Mahmoud Salem]

Thanks for your reply Mark
But I do appreciate more clarification as I checked the tidal coefficient for a few locations from Africa & Asia and found it to be strongest at exactly full moon(day 14) and newmoon(zero days)
I used tides4fishing.com as my reference, I don't know if this is what you mean by tide chart or you were referring to something else

As for finding which days & times work best for me, I'll leave that to those instances (many) when you are forced a date or a certain schedule; as you guys here have so much experience that I'd be really wasting a lot if I insist on starting from scratch
Also we still do a lot of jigging, so I'm trying to pick the best hours for popping as it is more physically demanding and leave the "other" times for jigging

[Courtland Babcock]

I only have 1 trip under my belt for GT. I am by no means a GT expert but since you only have a few responses in a week, here is an opinion.

I personally stay away from the bigger than average(new/full) moon phases when planning a trip. I feel the moon has other influences for fish and ocean dwellers that include spawning, feeding, breeding, nighttime activity due to low light or bright light conditions. These all may have an effect on feeding. Some positive, some negative. I prefer to avoid them altogether. As my friend says, I like to take the evils out.

If given the choice I will avoid the full and new moon by at least 3 days on either side. They may make for extra currents and in some cases, maybe too much for normal feeding, which is what I find on my local reef species. If I had to say, I would stay more away from the Full moon than the New moon.

As far as tidal movement it goes by the rule of 12's for a normal 6 hour tide:
- 1st hour - 1/12 of the water moves
- 2nd hour - 2/12 of the water moves
- 3rd hour - 3/12....
- 4th hour - 3/12....
- 5th hour - 2/12....
- 6th hour - 1/12 of the water moves