It will be interesting today to see if any of these anglers "run the tide," a term commonly used for moving to stay on a particular water level. "You've got about a two- or three-hour window when you can catch fish from the west to the east," said Justin Lucas earlier this week.
You can see that window in a sampling of today's tide chart. With the tide changes starting to the west in the Delta and moving east, Antioch is already close to dead low, which will occur at 10 a.m. It will be low tide further east near Stockton at 1 p.m. Low tide up the Sacramento River at Sacramento won't occur until 3 p.m.
The top four anglers – Aaron Martens, Chris Zaldain, Justin Lucas and Ish Monroe – all started on the eastern side of the Delta, apparently hoping to take advantage of the higher tide there early.
Lucas mentioned yesterday that he might make a long run west later today – sort of "tide time traveling." If you want to catch some of the rising tide during competition hours today, you're going to have to head west to do it.