TIDES & WHEN TO FISH - CA Delta (Boat Positioning, Water Velocity, Shallow v Deep Waters): Part 1

fishing is fun but hooking is the only way we're going to show you how to catch some fish today hey Alan we've been fishing the California delta for about two years now and from my point of view from what you've been teaching me is one of the most important um aspects of fishing the California delta yet probably the most complex one is learning and understanding the tides you can go out anytime and try to fish and you might get lucky and catch a couple fish and you might try to recreate it again you don't know why and I think that has to do with the tides the tides are very important when you're fishing the Delta any tial water is so crucial I mean when I when I decide I'm going to go fishing I look at the tide chart and it tells me where I need to go so I can remember first time Tracy y took me down here in Delta I was 16 years old I think it was in 1970 and we actually went to W Grove and we're fishing SN grass and we fished a day and we had a phenomenal day and I noticed on the bank that the waterline on the trees was like five four or 5T higher than the water level I didn't think nothing of it so we had a really good day fishing so the next week I sneak back down there and I get down the water and the water's up on the top of the tree and never got bit so I didn't know what the heck was going on I thought you know how do they release water here how did they have water coming in but what it was it boiled down to was [Music] tides and that actually is a really good point because I remember we first start fishing you'd be like this is a this is a good week this is a good week and then next week we wouldn't go to that place anymore and I go we did so good L the week before and you go no no that this is a bad week for tides for that area so every day there's two tides so the tide comes up goes down comes up goes down and one is bigger and every day it'll just get a hour later hour later every day but you will have two tides and one of them is taller than the other one and you know if you're a fish and you've been here all your life you could tell how fast the water is going and that tells me you know where the fish are going to be where they're feeding you know on how high the water's coming up so tides are very crucial you know when you're trying to come down here and not only just stripers but bath sturgeon anything that swims in the Delta the tide reflects them so the tides are really important for Bank fishermen too because you got high tide and low tide and probably high tide is going to be a lot better because they have higher water the fish will come closer to the bank so learn your Tides even if you're a bank [Music] fisherman and so so how do you determine what the tide will be let's say you want to go fish um shag Salo how do you find how do you decide okay I want to fish shag slooh so basically when I'm coming down to Dela say I wanted to fish shag slooh I have there's no tide station for shag SLO so you have to search so I look for the closest one to there which would be Snug Harbor and then I know from experience that it's about an hour later so I know that the tide is going to be hour later than what is how do you determine do you look just on a map of all the different title stations how do you know which title station to choose which would be the most relevant to where you want to fish the most easiest way is to look on your GPS and your boat because there's tide stations on your GPS and you just find the closest one to the area you want to fish and click on it and it tells you what time the tide is and then once you know and you learn you just get your cell phone and there's a tide app I use one called tie charts and then I go on there and it'll ask me you know where I want to go I could be in snog grass I could be in San Francisco Bay I could be anywhere they're all on here and it'll tell you the tide so you say like an hour there probably an hour between Snug Harbor and shag slooh is it by distance you know that or because it makes a turn or how do you make that determination all you have to do is when you look at tide the closer to the Bay you are the earlier the tide so if you have a high at 10:00 down the bay over here it's probably going to be 5 hours later so you're going to be looking at like 2 in the afternoon so it gets earlier as you go down toward the [Music] Bay now when we come into an area and there's like noticeably a tide going in One Direction which way is best to present your lure you know when you're fishing Tidal Fish they always when they're ready to eat and they're looking at something to go eat they're always looking into the current so if you know which way the tide goes and there's not a whole lot of water systems that the tide actually turns around the San wiing River um cashlo and the sack it actually turns around incoming the water comes from the bay in and out going it turns around and goes the other direction the Sacramento River up by Sacramento the American River the Feather River they all go one way they go straight out toward but on the incoming tide they go real slow and then outgoing they gain the momentum again and so what would they cut off be on the second maybe about Real Vista I'd say Real Vista is probably where you're going to see the difference where it'll actually turn around flip Direction so let's say I want to fish a high outgoing tide do you look at the closest one that's furthest from the bay cuz you want an outgoing tide and then you start to follow it through or you stay in one area and fish the whole tide cycle no I move because you know a lot of times especially like in a bass boat or something I could go 15 or 20 minutes and I could gain two or three hours on a tide okay so you know you always fish I don't care where you are in the Delta you know you're fishing any of the flats you know is shallow water they you want to be there hour before high tide and then when the water starts moving that's the best time so no matter where you go you know you want to be there when the ties almost Peak that high and happens at slack tide When the tide is neither really not really incoming or outgoing there's a there's a Time slack when you have slack tide the fish will just lay there and they won't do anything and why is that cuz they know they cuz there's no movement there's nothing that's stirring the bait up or nothing that's those kind of fish like sters and bass they'll sit on a point or somewhere where the current's pushing into it where they just sit there and wait for the food to come to them now if you have no water movement there's not going to be any fish moving around or nothing so they they go and rest you know they don't eat 24 hours a day so when I go out and fishing I'm looking at Tides so I always pay attention to where the water height is because it's so important so a lot of guys will ask me hey Alan when do you go fish those shallow Flats well the best time to fish those shallow Flats is probably about an hour before high tide and then maybe all the way to about 3 hours after high tide so I like in those splited is is the water has to be high in order what I found that those fish go in there and feed mainly the bigger fish so after that when the tide drops out then what well I head out to the deeper water a lot in the channels anywhere from 20 to 35 feet of water and graft around till I find them and then drop a spoon down there and jig them so the tides are so crucial and there's different areas in different parts of the Delta where incoming is better and outgoing is better so I don't though it's not a something that I've done over the years is just spending so much time down there fishing and then writing everything down so I know you know what I if I went out and slaughtered them one morning and it was incoming tide then I would jot it down so after a while you recreate this like a Playbook and I'll look and I go you know what I need to be over here by the mccamy on incoming and vers vice versa explain something to me we're out crappie fishing today and we find that high going tide is best for Crappie right and it's literally you can see the crappie turn on and you have live active Target so you can see that there are hundreds and hundreds of crappie there you should get bit right but at high outgoing tide we're getting bit like crazy literally the minute the boat starts to turn because the tide slacks up it slacks up and then it's just dead and even though you would think if you didn't have act a Target that the fish are gone no there's hundreds of fish in the exact same area but they don't bite on incoming they don't eat why don't they bite on that incoming side they they don't eat 24 hours a day so usually on a push you know where we're actually fishing the incoming is faster than the outgoing tide so they seem to like to gather around the trees and stuff you know when the water is moving but not at that's right [Music] yeah for example when you come out to the Delta do you find high tide or low tide is better depends what I'm fishing for and what time of the year it all has a little you know something to do with the title I spend all my life down here and I kind of pretty much know so you know if it's low tide high tide I know where to go and actually catch the fish but sometimes I have to go a long ways so it just depends on what I'm chasing what what species and like for example we came out today and we thought it was almost high going to be high outgoing tide and where we like to fish that's the best for Crappie but when we came in even though the tide chart said it should be almost high outgoing tide we went by and we saw we saw the weeds and they were going the wrong direction it was still incoming tide you could look at a tide chart and 2050 right now if I wanted to look that barhead I can cuz they make them to just you know they just it's charted so basically it depends on how much rain we get how high our rivers are and basically you're going to see me go by you know those light markers on the river how how I go right by them a lot of times cuz I'm looking at the direction of the water so I know if it's incoming or outgoing and I can see how hard it's going and then I make the adjustment cuz a lot of times on a year that we get a lot of rain it might be 2 hours off so when I like on the main Channel you see this light marker here so you see the water here right now it's slack tied so that Al going tide has just stopped and then it's going to turn around but if the water was out going tide it would be going out back toward the bay and when it's coming in it'll go inward toward town but I use these markers all the time so I know for the that fishing the next two months I know two hours make the difference and also if it's big tide if it's a minus tide if it's a slow tide from a long length that will tell that will actually show if the Tide's going to turn when you think it's going to turn yeah it's just you know a lot of times you just have to go out and look do your homework and see what the difference in you know in the time wise where the water's moving cuz a lot of times I'll say you know like today I said High tied at 11:30 but it didn't turn till 12:30 so was an hour later water it's pushing into the island so I know the water's still in it was going out it would be coming out this way but that's one way that I tell I always go check because sometimes the tides are going to be affected by high water or low water as far as rain water get a lot of water a lot of rain water it just causes the water to back up so the tides are use of a it's just experience the time on the water that you learn this stuff but always check and I use marker buoys all the time to see which way the water going so when I go by it I [Music] know and I think instead of having you know really a long video which is a really complex you know we're probably going to break it down by different species like crappie stripe bass stripers and also bass because they treat and approach the tie differently whether they're almost pelagic going around like a striper they're territorial like a bass or they move according to their spawning times like a crappie yeah a lot of times how many times we go out fishing and I just go hey time to move yeah you know because I know that when that tide changes I need to be elsewhere I don't know how many times you we're it's like 10:15 and it's dead and we haven't gone a bite in an hour and you look down to the clock you say yeah about 15 minutes going to turn on get ready and literally in 15 minutes we're tripled up you go I go how did you know that you go well I could see the way the grass is laying when it starts to go this direction the bite will turn on yeah so how many times we're in that flooded water you look at the grass and it's bent over this way and then see I said said many a times how important bolt positioning is because if you figure the weeds are laying like this and you cast across sideways you're going to get grass all the time right but if you line the boat up you know which way the fish are facing right and then you line the boat you cast out you bring it straight in where the Weaver laying fish on so there's a lot to it and the tides tell me a lot yeah and I've learned a lot from just watching like if all of a sudden you're casting on this side of the boat and you turn around you're casting that side of the boat you say get out of here but I know it's because the fish are facing this direction and I need to bring my lur into their face they always have to look into the current yeah so really on any type of fishing in the in the Delta you really need to know your ties and the importance of the ti it's so important like I said it's a Bible to me so you know learning the tides takes time you know the coming years I've been down here and it's helped me and it's you know it's like now you know I'm could pretty much dial you in every time almost almost every [Music] time the ties are very very very uh complex subject you know and so we're going to put out a series on the different species and then also get a little more deep in the tide so if you have any questions please leave it down in the comment box and then we can get an idea of the issues and subjects you want to know to cover about tides in the California delta so one of the big things about reading a tide chart any of the tide charts if you ever see a red numbers in red and a minus in front of it it means that it's a negative tide so basically like on the Delta on the average tide the water will come up 4T every day come up 4T 5T and then go back out on the minus tide it going to keep coming up and it might come up 6 feet and then go out so you can picture it the water being this High how much velocity you're going to get so you're going to have a lot more movement so then I go further back into these spots and seem to do real well fish know they could tell by how fast that current's moving and even if you're not looking at the direction of the water just knowing how much where you are in the tide cycle I mean sometimes you might need a 38 ounce head and sometimes you might need a half an ounce lur based on how much water is in there yeah you can see it on your depth and your fish finder but really knowing how much water is coming in the system you can start to plan for the day of what you need to prep yeah you know learning the tithe the velocity of the water it helps you do everything picks a spot you know different depths of water different weights of lures everything it's just tells me a lot I catch so many is that why oh oh it's not because I'm lucky I ain't got luck so you got to be careful when you're fishing these flooded Islands cuz like when we're fishing these flooded Islands out here you see those Pelicans on the corner there they're standing on the road but where that stick is in the water that's where the tea in the road is so they're only in like 2 in of water standing there and you can put your boat on there the water is obviously coming up so if you got stuck on it you wait a few hours and you'll be able to float off but the water is going out I've actually seen that road sticking out of the water so you would be stuck there for 5 or 6 [Music] hours the tides influence when when and where you fish so usually when I'm bait fishing you you want to fish outgo tide so usually um the best time is on a high outgoing tide so you could go to like your app or you can look on your fish finder and as you can see that little cross with the circle it's just starting to go out as you see it over the top where it's just starting to go out so this is actually a excellent tide to be fishing when you're bait fishing why is that normally like when the water's high like right now we have so much rain you could probably catch them on both Tides because the water's still going to go pretty fast so usually when you have a normal year when outgoing tide you'll have um the water moving pretty fast and then on the incoming it almost comes to a halt and usually when there's no water moving you get a ton of little fish that'll pester and eat all your bait off so usually the outgoing tie is a better tied to fish but when it's real highlight this you could usually catch them on both and does the moon phase make a difference I'm sure it does but I don't usually pull around that I think on the full moon they they'll spawn stripers spawn on the surface um they don't spawn on the bottom they they're a surface spawner so you know they're up on the top of the water so usually on when you get a full moon the water temperature right they'll they'll start spawning usually I don't I haven't I used to use see a few around here during that time of the year but most of the time they'll run way up North up in the clusa area and night's landing and spawn up there so I hope you enjoyed this video hit that like and please subscribe it'll help the channel a lot you want to leave a comment just kick that bottom box and I'll get back to you in two or three days and I hope you you realize how important tides are because they are very important and look out for our upcoming videos cuz we're to break it down by species and like you know the ba bass sometimes on high tide if where they'll be in in the Delta if they're going to be relating to rocks tulies um grass and it's the same thing for stripers and crappies but they all act differently yes Tides affect each species differently and if I know what I'm going after I look at the tides and I don't miss very often so thanks so much for watching see you next time bye what is it complicating reflect what aspect [Music] okay fishing it's fine but hooking is the only way we're going to show you how to catch some fish today m

Channel: Alan Fong Outdoors

Views: 10,545

Keywords: livescope, active target, live target, downscan, lowrance, flukemaster, tactical bassin, informative fisherman, alan fong outdoors, fishing tricks, fishing secret, fishing tips, how to, fish finder, gloomis, yozuri, shimano, bass, shad, fishing technique, delta, how to fish, striper, fishtrap, swimbait, how to tackle, minnow, brush hog, tide, tulle, grass, bladed jig, zman, striped bass, alabama rig, rod balancing, pike minnow, anchovy, tidal, tide chart, full moon, incoming, outgoing

Id: _r4R-fQPtsg

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024