tides this weekend?

Member Joined: Sep 21, 2007 Posts: 12 Location: bristol

Hi all, thinkng of trying down the bristol channel this weekend which tide would be the best either on the friday onwards? never been before so any advice would be great.

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:31 pm

Hi

The biggest piece of advice i can give you is - do not bother. The tides this weekend are massive. I believe they around 13.8, for the BC thats big and will be moving soooo fast you would be lucky to hold bottom with 7oz.

If you have fished never the BC before it needs a bit of investigating first, particularly if you are planning on fishing it alone.

I would recommend to use this weekend as a info gathering session. Drive down the M5 and get off at Brean Sands and from there take the coast road all the way up looking for fishing places. Trust me this is well worth it. Places to pay attention to are Brean Downs, Sand Point, Ladye Bay all around Clevedon, Portishead and finishing around Severn Beach/Aust area. This will take a whole day easy and with such a big tide you will be able to pick out any danger areas.

I am a real novice fishing BC as i have only been a few times but one thing i have learned is this area needs a lot of respect. The tide comes and goes ( particularly ) very very fast. The rocks and weeds it leaves behind is very slippery and the mud can be a death trap. I once sunk just to below waist height when walking to ' test ' a spot.

Have a good snoop around and you should pay dividends.

cheers

lee

Member Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 13

Try next weekend.

Tides are around these heights...
Thursday 1st - 10.97 -@ 11.14 & 23.52
Friday 2nd - 10.27 @ 12.17
Saturday 3rd - 10.26 @ 13.33
Sunday 4th - 10.44 @ 14.57

These won't be bad at all to fish.
Anything higher tends to run out really quick and will pull you lot, even on 6-8oz leads.

The ideal heights are apparrently around the 9m mark.
There is one at 9.83m on Saturday the 3rd, but that is around a 1am, give or take, depending on your mark, and 9.93 on the sunday at 2.20am.

These times are for around the portishead area. Times will vary slightly depending how further up or down the channel you intend on going.

As you have not been there before, you could play it safe by trying out Portishead pier, not this weekend though as anything over a 12.5 tide covers it. Try Battery point, or Ladye Bay, rocky marks, but not too bad getting to.
A lot of ground up channel between portishead and Severn Beach can be very tricky, very muddy, and some hidden gulleys under the grass which i know of someone falling into, very scary if you are alone. The tides can sneak in behind you some places, so safest bet for now is Battery Point, Portishead pier or Ladye Bay, even Clevedon pier, but you pay there.

As leeman says, forget this weekend really, tides are way too fast, not so bad coming in, but on the out, within seconds your lead is off down the channel.

Whatever you decide on doing.....Tight Lines and be safe.

Regular Joined: Jun 30, 2007 Posts: 250

i would like to have tried minehead, this weekend never mind sad