Moon And Tides

On The Water: Big tides brings not bad fishing

Big new moon tides and fairly stable weather gave both inshore and offshore anglers a chance to target their favorite catches. Also, with the mini lobster season to our south in the Florida Keys, our waters were left pretty vacant of boats and anglers.

Offshore, there were reports of grouper, snapper and amberjacks in depth s from 45 to 165 foot. Mangrove snapper from 12 to 20 inches were taken over patch reefs west of Boca Grande Pass in depths from 45 to 50 feet. Heavy chumming to pull the fish from the bottom, then fishing pilchards, shrimp and cut sardines worked best. With the clear water, using a 20- to 30-pound fluorocarbon leader helped improve the bite.

Bottom dropping in 50 to 75 foot depths southwest off the point of Sanibel Island turned up catches of red grouper up to 12 pounds. The grouper were caught on 4 to 6 inch live pinfish or jig/squid combo rigs. A variety of lane snapper, grunts and porgies were also caught over the same live coral or swiss cheese bottom as the grouper.

Further west, anglers looking for something with a little more power found amberjacks over structure in depths from 125 to 165 feet. Live pinfish, thread herring and Williamson Jigs were the baits of choice. After a two month closure, the season for greater amberjacks reopened on Aug. 1. Go to www.myfwc.com to get the latest updates; from reports, there are some big AJ's waiting to do battle.

Inshore, the new moon brought us some big high tides through the week and continued through the weekend. These tides are great for working the mangroves for redfish. The red bite has improved over the last few weeks with most fish reported averaging 19 to 22 inches, a few in the upper slot and the largest reported at 32 inches.

I have been working mangrove shorelines in Matlacha Pass and looking for areas where the wind (even if it's just a hint of a breeze) and the tide are pushing water into the shoreline. The last three hours of the incoming tide have been best. For bait, we are tail hooking a live shiner or small pinfish on a 1/0 circle hook with a split-shot sinker and fishing the bait about a foot and a half under a popping cork. Cast as close to the mangroves as you can and allow the bobber to drift down the shore with the current while keeping it tight to the trees.

Other anglers also reported doing well with redfish over the same tide stage while pitching large shrimp cut in half and allowing them to soak on bottom under the mangroves. Redfish were also reported from Bull Bay across the Harbor on cut ladyfish and in Pine Island Sound around north Captiva on live pinfish, cut ballyhoo and weedless gold spoons.

The Big Splat: New two moon hypothesis

[4 August 2011, Early Earth may have had two moons ] have constructed a classic example of a testable scientific hypothesis that fits the known facts.

It’s been known for decades that there are striking differences between the surface of the Moon on the near side (the side we see from Earth), which is relatively smooth, low and flat, and the far side, which is high, mountainous and has a much thicker crust, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) thicker. It’s also widely accepted that something about the size of Mars slammed into the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago and ejected material that eventually coalesced into the Moon. The new hypothesis, as simulated by computer, proposes that two moons were created at about that time with the second roughly 1/30th (about 4%) the mass of the larger moon. The second moon shared the same orbit for about 100 million years but at some point it collided – not with a huge high velocity bang, but more likely a slower velocity “splat.”

The relatively slow impact caused neither a huge crater nor much volcanic activity, but added a deep layer of rock – a kind of mountain building from the sky – to one side of the Moon. Because of the Earth-Moon tides, the heavier, thicker side automatically became the dark-side, the one not visible from Earth. The model helps to explain the composition of the Moon’s crust, which on the near-side is dominated by potassium, rare-earth metals and phosphorus (the so-called KREEP composition). This could have been caused by displacement of ‘old crust’ from the far-side to the near-side during the collision.

Now here’s the key point: This is a model, which makes a hypothesis. It’s not the only model out there. In fact, Jutzi and Asphaug have colleagues at U.C. Santa Cruz that developed a model explaining the far-side geology as a result of the much stronger tides of the early Moon, when it was only about 80,000 miles from Earth. There are other models and other explanations, some of which have already been displaced by data returned from various Moon missions (e.g. the Moon is not made of green cheese).

The next step, as it is with any true scientific hypothesis, is to test it – to find evidence that confirms or disputes the conclusion. Data collected by NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) may help, but the real kicker would be to collect rock samples from the far-side. Meanwhile, scientists will do what they usually do – argue – and try to knock down the two moon hypothesis, or replace it with a better one. Eventually, it is likely there will be enough evidence in this case to settle the argument, and science will move on. Splat, indeed.

Moon and Tides

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