Tides / Guides / Spring tides and neap tides
Spring tides and neap tides
Updated October 15, 2026.
Spring tide does not mean April. It means the tide "springs" up, in the older sense of the word. Around the new moon and the full moon, the sun and the moon are pulling along the same line. The high tides climb higher and the low tides drop lower. The range, which is the difference between a high and the neighboring low, is at its largest for that part of the month.
A neap tide falls around the first quarter and the last quarter, when the moon is half lit and sits about 90 degrees away from the sun in the sky. The two pulls argue with each other. Highs are lower than they were at the spring, and lows are not as low. The range shrinks.
The moon on the station page
Each station page names the phase and about how much of the moon is lit. A new moon or a full moon is the spring-tide part of the month. A first quarter or a last quarter is the neap. The days in between are the walk from one to the other. The largest range is often a day or two after the new or full moon, not on the minute of the phase, because the water takes time to answer.
A bigger range usually means stronger current in the inlets, the guts, and the mouths of creeks. More water has to enter and leave in the same number of hours. That is useful for fishing, and it is also when a ramp, a flat, or a sandbar that was comfortable at neap can be a problem at spring. A very low spring low uncovers bars. A very high spring high covers marsh that stays dry at neap.
What a spring tide does not promise
A spring tide is not automatically a good fishing day, and a neap is not a day off the water. Wind and a falling barometer can bury a spring low under a foot of extra water, or they can push a neap high over a dock. Read the prediction for the station you are actually using, then look at the forecast on that same page. The five-day note under the table says when the moon is near a spring or a neap for that station, in that station's local time.