Flamingo Tide Question

nbseafrog

Hey Guys,

I posted this on the Keys General page as well. Lots of looks but no response. I'm gonna be in Islamorada for a long weekend this weekend and plan to work the Sprigger bank area. I fished it once before but did not plan that run around tides or anything, so I don't know what tide chart or how much of an adjustment I need to make. Can any of you Flamingo types help me out?

I am more of an offshore guy, so if you have any tips, suggestions or insight that will help, I'd love to hear it. I've made the run to Sprigger once before and had a really good time. Snapper & trout with jigs/gulp shrimp under Cajun thunders and a 80-100lb tarpon on a live pin fish under a cork. Anyway, we'll have all day Sat, Sun & Mon to fish. Looking for the typical inshore game, trout, reds, tarpon, etc...

We'll be heading south from FTL tomorrow afternoon, so if I don't respond back until after the weekend, thanks in advance! Nick

OviV

I would say use the Cape Sable Tides and add about 30 minutes for High and 15 for low but this is an educated guess. I haven't fish that area in a long time.

nbseafrog

Thanks Ovi! That's a start. I'll post what I ended up going with for anyone else interested.

lemaymiami

One other possibility is to look at tide books for the Marathon or Key West areas (every book has a page with a breakdown of nearby area tide variations. I checked my Flamingo and Pavillion Key books and neither have any references for that area....

nbseafrog

Thanks for checking your book, Bob! I'll be hitting that area tomorrow morning regardless, so I'll see first hand what the times are. I can extrapolate for Monday as well if the weather lets us get out. Looks like rain is in the forecast. Thanks!

capttim

Checkout real tide app by GPS real tide. It calculates the tide wherever you drop a pin on the map. Will show you tide heights, time, and speeds.

northbiscaynebay1

Check out this web site. Might be helpful.
http://fl.usharbors.com/monthly-tides/Florida-Upper%20Keys/Flamingo,%20Florida%20Bay

nbseafrog

Thanks Capt Tim & North Biscayne. I'll e able to use these on the next trip down. The tide app sounds awesome. I'll have my wife download that (she has the smart phone). We did pretty good even without knowing the tides. I'll post something later today on the report page.

Thanks!

kbkeys

IMO, the specific stages of tide out there doesn't matter much as long as you have moving water. I've never noticed any real differences in how the bite was affected by the tides there or Schooner . We just drift along til it happens then anchor up. Always fun out there. Good Luck!

nbseafrog

Thanks for the reply, kbkeys. I totally agree with you that moving water is what you need. Knowing when the high and low tides are will help me determine when I want to be at my fishing spot since the water doesn't really move at the high or low tide. Don't want to get up extra early only to arrive at a slack tide.

So, you drift a spot and drop the anchor (as quietly as possible I'm sure) when you hook into a decent trout? I did hit the mob on the gps when we'd hook up and found that we were hooking up around the same area on that day. So we would drift it until we were at the wrong depth and reset to drift that same spot. It would make sense to stop my drift at that point. Seems so simple, yet I didn't think to do it while we were out there. So, thanks for that tip! BRILLIANT!!!

Capt Tim, thanks for the smartphone app. Just downloaded it and it's pretty cool. Wish I woulda had this last week. It will be put to good use!

Thanks Guys! I will post how we did on both the keys and S FL pages since both work this area.