| Tides |
 |
| Sunday, 14 September 2008 11:15 |
|
Tides When you're Sport Shrimping, you wade in the grass flats at low tide. Therefore, it will be of a great benefit for you to understand how the tides work. There are times that the newspapers and weather reports will mention two low tides, but you will only be able to shrimp on one of those low tides. It is best to have a tide chart to look at. It is possible to get these charts on the Internet. Also, local newspapers such as the St. Petersburg Times (in Pinellas County) have a monthly copy printed in a special "Gulf and Bay" section. When the low tide is low a couple of hours after dark, this is the tide we want. (An outgoing tide at night) On the chart, it will show the low tide to be on or near the MLLW line ( Mean Lower Low Wate.r) As you shrimp an area, you will get to know what to look for. The water depth can depend on where you shrimp, and which way the wind is blowing. In Tampa Bay, and along much of the West Coast of Florida for example, when the wind blows West, you get very low tides and when the wind blows East, you get deeper waters. I'll try to give you an idea how the tides work (just an example - then you figure it out.) You can shrimp in January if you can handle all that cold water and small shrimp but, let's start in February. The low tide that "Sport Shrimpers" are looking for will be early hours of the morning in February. Let's say about 3:00 am or 4:00 am. We can get this tide about every two weeks. But you can shrimp a few days on each side of the low tide. That gives you a break of about eight days of no shrimping. In march, this low tide will be about a couple hours earlier, say 1:00 am or 2:00 am. In April, this low tide will be about midnight. May,..about 11 pm. June 10:00 pm. As you can see, every two weeks the tide is about 35 to 45 minutes earlier. |
| Last Updated on Friday, 23 January 2009 18:05 |
