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Fishing Tips Facilities for disabled anglers Accommodation suitable for disabled anglers Detailed history of the River Waveney Back to Angling Page click here
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Dave Gladwell writes...Inland Tidal Waters - A brief look into why the River flows both ways at BecclesThe lower tidal reaches of the Waveney and the mighty Yare have several things in common, but the biggest is the link between their High Tide times. Married at St Olaves just below the road bridge by the artificial man-made Haddiscoe Cut; there is a free passage of water between the two Rivers. To take an in-depth look at the tide patterns reveals some interesting facts. It all forms part of a picture for calculations to assess the state of the relative high and low waters for fishing outings that has taken me years to come to terms with. Just by a stroke of chance, high tide at Beccles Quay, Beauchamp Arms and Ellingham Mill will all be about the same time as the mighty River Thames in the Capital. This pattern has a general reflection throughout all the Broads system. It is a useful benchmark to operate from. Sea water in the East Coast estuary creates pressure upon watercourses, transferring influences well inland. Bear in mind these predictions and calculations are vulnerable to seasonal changes in the weather and not an exact scenario. The peaks actually coincide with the High Tide times published in National Daily Newspapers for London Bridge. Keep an eye on the hour that changes with the Winter put back and Greenwich Mean Summer time though as some editors to do not execute or record this change accurately in their papers. Anglers Mail in the Sea Fishing Section gives the time tables too, but of course the Angling Times though, besotted with its fascination of carp, have long lost their way in providing such useful information.
These earlier named river location points on the Yare and Waveney, as another rough guide for rule of thumb, are about 5 hours different from the tides published in the Eastern Daily Press for Lowestoft. Now to get a good predictive reading we need to know how long the tide runs for. So, if we have already established the tide will peak at high level, to turn at 7 am on the Saturday morning, for example; it will also predictably be high at 18.50 hours in the evening. Almost exactly twelve hours later so use that gauge for your estimates, (say 7 at night too). The change times vary by as near an hour a day as within 10 minutes or so. Note later what is said about rain and wind as elements of disruption though. This means that one day later - on Sunday - it will be high at 8 a.m. and again around 20.00 hrs. Because as mentioned earlier, it runs a complete twelve hours round, it will be at its lowest turn point six hours later - at half way between top tide times. Follow this through and the next Saturday it will be the reverse of the week before. Remember we have accumulated roughly 10 minutes per day difference totalled up as about a full hour variation most of the time. So then, that works out, we have Low tide at around 7 a.m., and again at near as a cat to cream, at 19.00 hours. Just a quick look at the River will soon establish whether you are on the right tide train for a correct prediction - but it takes practice.
The effects of change can inspire optimism. Perhaps that your swim will change if you can see all over it at Ellingham as colour creeps into the water and roach start to feed less finicky. Or at Dunburgh and Shipmeadow, depress your feeding as the colour falls out. Swims really do change that much, either coming alive or fading away. Magnify that concept for the bigger wider river reaches, and you are faced with recognizing the same logic. Remember on a tide that is edgy and dour, refusing to run traditionally it can mess about for an hour = 20% of the match! Sometimes when very high for example, when you will get almost no response at all! Mean and moody old Rivers. Now we need the facility to build in a bit of fine tuning. Long dry spells in Summer can diminish flow and bring forward high tide times as there is less resistance to cause pressure against the incoming tide of downstream flow. Generally speaking the average overall difference between the high and low points of a tidal rise and fall on the rivers Yare and Waveney will be about 30". This means as a rule of thumb it alters 5"-6" and hour. Keep your eye on this because 2" every 20 minutes is what you are going to be needing to alter your float by to keep in touch with feeding fish. Shotting patterns too, require a constant modification to maintain balance and presentation. One rigid unaltered float presentation will not achieve maximum efficiency throughout a session.
You need to change with the river! Keeping in tune! Do not lose sight of fish moving up to 2 feet off the bottom to feed at higher water levels in the deeper areas sometimes either. To give an indication of how seriously one needs to take these high and lows into consideration pause a while and compare Beccles with Ellingham. A 30" difference at Beccles will be approximately only a volume change of 20% in eleven or twelve feet of water. At the tidal head however where your water is often only 30" deep at low water, it will represent an average of 50% difference in your swim as it tops up. For here it could be said, it is almost twice as deep as it was! In places under 30" deep, it bottoms out completely leaving dry banks sticking out and just side slipstreams, as it does immediately below Ellingham Mill. Convinced yet that this issue is worthy of trying to understand as anglers? Hence an occasional monitoring visit keeps the mind exactly honed to the change times. Being at one with and in tune with the river is vitally important as you strive to recognize its wily face and irrational moods.
Extra rain from a storm, or a week of steady flow, can increase the ebb flowing out, and then hold up the water coming in a bit which was making the high flood tide. Maybe this could alter your calculations by 20 minutes from what you have plotted down. Strong winds too can have an effect. If it is Easterly, blowing up the river from the sea - and both rivers have a lot of their course flowing directly West to East, delays can again occur. The outgoing flow can be held back by the River's rolling waves sometimes 8"-10" high, and the resulting surface pressure on the ebb. What else does wind do? It creates a fusion of surface debris and pushes together surface grease and oils by cohesion. They may drift out of your swim on the ebb, but most annoyingly they are likely to return on a backing up flow. They ruin the mending of waggler lines and can accumulate on your ledgering line at water breakpoint. Worse they create false bites and can jam up your tip or top eye. These are just a few more considerations in your overall observations. Strangely enough the extra high tides are usually slow creepers building up gradually, rather than with a fast surge. When they run off however, they do it quite quickly so fish have to be all about adapting to it, and start to burn up lots of energy as they counteract it giving us a reliable formula: Flow = energy consumption = food replacement therapy. In itself this becomes the biggest single controlling factor for tidal waters irrespective of species or size. There is much, much more to understanding the Rivers than this and I have pages and pages of notes collected over the years. However, I hope these thoughts and basic principles will not only help here, but may be applied with some similarity to an inland tidal water nearer to some of the visitors to our Community web site from all over the World. Dave Gladwell © Can you let us know by email if there are any questions you would like to ask Dave regarding fishing technique, equipment or any fishing tips. www.bungay-suffolk.co.uk
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