How to read a tide chart for fishing
A tide chart is a fishing plan. Once you can read one, you stop guessing when to fish — you arrive at the spot ten minutes before the bite turns on.
Step by step
-
1
Find the four daily extremes.
Every coastal tide chart shows four times per day: two highs and two lows. Each pair is roughly 6 hours and 12 minutes apart. The exact times shift forward by ~50 minutes each day as the moon orbits.
-
2
Read the height column — it tells you the range.
Height is shown in metres above chart datum (lowest astronomical tide). The DIFFERENCE between consecutive high and low is the tidal range. A 1.6 m range is small (neap tide). A 1.9 m range is big (spring tide). Bigger range = more water movement = more bite activity, all else equal.
-
3
Identify the rising and falling phases.
Rising = between a low and the next high. Falling = between a high and the next low. The first two hours of a rising tide and the last two of a falling tide consistently produce the best estuary bite — water is moving, bait is moving with it, and predators stage at the edges of structure to ambush.
-
4
Cross-reference with sunrise and sunset.
A rising tide that coincides with sunrise or sunset is the gold standard for most estuary species. The two factors stack — moving water plus changing light. If today's tide hits sunrise, fish dawn. If it hits sunset, fish dusk. Tide-only is good; tide-plus-light is great.
-
5
Check the moon phase column.
New moon and full moon produce the biggest tidal ranges (spring tides). First and last quarter produce the smallest (neap tides). Spring tides scour estuaries — fish hold tighter to structure and feed harder during the runs. Neap tides slow the bite but make rock-fishing safer.
What this looks like on Fishare
On every Fishare spot page the tide table is laid out in this exact order — time, height, range, and a visual indicator of rising or falling. The verdict for that day weights rising-tide windows higher than slack water because the catch corpus shows that is where the bite consistently lands.
The chart on a spot page goes 12 hours ahead by default. The 7-day strip at the top of the page lets you scan a week in one glance — find the day where the biggest range coincides with the lowest swell and the right light, and you have your weekend planned.
The exception — slack water
Most rules have an exception and here is this one: certain species feed on slack water, not moving water. Mulloway in Sydney Harbour are a slack-tide species — they hold near deep ledges and feed when the current eases. Same for some snapper grounds. If you target a species that follows this pattern, ignore the "rising tide" general rule and watch for the slack window instead.
The species pages on Fishare flag this where it applies — the mulloway, snapper, and jewfish guides all call out slack-tide bias.
