Dawn, dusk and golden hour: the best light for fishing

What twilight is, and why there are three kinds

When the sun sets, night doesn’t fall all at once. The upper atmosphere is still catching sunlight and scattering it down to the ground. That glow fades as the sun sinks farther below the horizon, and it’s measured by how many degrees the sun sits below that line. For a sense of scale, your closed fist held at arm’s length covers about 10 degrees of sky.

There are three stages of twilight, one after another:

• Civil twilight: from the horizon to 6 degrees below. You can see fine without a flashlight, the sky still has color, and you can make out rocks and water. This is roughly the blue hour.
• Nautical twilight: from 6 to 12 degrees. At sea you can still see the horizon, which sailors once needed to measure star heights with a sextant. On land, you’ll want a light.
• Astronomical twilight: from 12 to 18 degrees. It looks like night to the naked eye, but the sky isn’t fully dark for faint stars yet.

In the morning, the order runs in reverse: astronomical, nautical, civil and finally sunrise.

Golden hour

Golden hour has no official definition. It’s the stretch just after sunrise or just before sunset when the sun is so low that its light comes in warm, orange and slanting, with long shadows. It’s usually placed at the time the sun is less than about 6 degrees above the horizon.

TidePlanet counts it that way: in the morning, from sunrise until the sun climbs to 6 degrees; in the evening, from the moment it drops below 6 degrees until sunset. In the lower 48 states, that works out to roughly 30 to 50 minutes, shorter in the South and longer up north.

Despite the name, it almost never lasts a full hour in the lower 48. You’d have to go to Alaska for that.

How long it lasts depends on where and when

Twilight length depends on how steeply the sun crosses the horizon:

• Near the equator, the sun rises and sets almost straight up and down, so twilight is short and night falls quickly.
• In the southern US, civil twilight runs about 23 to 26 minutes in South Florida and 25 to 30 minutes in Charleston.
• Farther north, it stretches out: about 28 to 35 minutes around Boston and up to 40 minutes or so around Seattle in June.
• Across the year, twilight is shortest near the March and September equinoxes and longest around the June solstice, with a smaller bump around the December solstice.

Daylight saving time adds another wrinkle. The jump in March and the fall back in November shift your usual dawn and dusk windows by an hour overnight, so recheck the times whenever the clocks change.

Why fish bite better in low light

Generations of anglers agree that dawn and dusk are good times to fish, and there are solid reasons behind it:

• Predators hunt with an edge. Many game fish, including striped bass, snook and redfish, are well equipped to hunt in dim light. In the half-light, they can see enough to strike while their prey has a harder time spotting them.
• The food moves. At dusk, much of the plankton rises toward the surface, followed by the baitfish that eat it and the fish that eat them. At dawn, the movement runs the other way.
• Fish come in shallow. With less light they feel safer and slide into skinny water, within reach of anglers on the beach, the bank or the flats.
• Your line and silhouette are harder to see. On clear Florida flats or calm summer water, that matters a lot.
• There are fewer people and boats. In summer the water is also cooler early on. Many beaches restrict fishing near swimmers or in lifeguarded areas during the day, so check local rules.

Dawn or dusk?

Both work, but they aren’t the same:

• At dawn in summer, the wind is often calm. Along Florida and the Gulf Coast, the sea breeze typically builds by late morning, and afternoon thunderstorms are common. The water is coolest, and the beach is empty.
• At dusk, the water is a little warmer after a day of sun, and you have the night ahead if you want to keep going. After a bright full-moon night, some anglers find the dawn bite slower because fish fed in the dark.

In the end, what usually decides it is which one lines up with a moving tide.

Add the tide: an example with real times

Take a day in late June in Charleston. The sun times are the real ones for that kind of day; the tide times are an example:

Event	Time
Low tide	5:30 a.m.
Civil twilight begins	5:43 a.m.
Sunrise	6:11 a.m.
Morning golden hour ends	6:48 a.m.
High tide	11:45 a.m.
Low tide	5:55 p.m.
Evening golden hour begins	7:54 p.m.
Sunset	8:30 p.m.
Civil twilight ends	8:59 p.m.

That day has two strong windows for throwing topwater lures for speckled trout and redfish. From 5:45 to about 8 a.m., the tide is just starting to flood, the light is low and the heat hasn’t set in. From about 7:30 p.m. until dark, the tide is coming in again and the light is fading. If you can only make one, the morning gets the edge in a Lowcountry summer: cooler, calmer and before the afternoon storms.

If a solunar period falls inside one of those windows, all the better. Our guide to solunar theory explains how to read them.

Staying safe in low light

The light goes faster than you expect, especially in fall and winter:

• Bring a headlamp with fresh batteries, even if you plan to be back before dark.
• Check when civil twilight ends and plan to be off the jetty or the rocks by then if you have to scramble back.
• Watch the tide on the way back. In the dark, it’s hard to tell whether rising water has cut off the sandbar or path you came in on. We cover that in tide safety.
• Tell someone where you’re going and when you’ll be back, and keep your phone in a waterproof pouch.

In practice

• Check sunrise, sunset and the start and end of civil twilight every day you plan to fish.
• Look for days when the change of light lines up with a rising or falling tide, not with slack water.
• In summer, favor dawn: less wind, fewer people and cooler water.
• Get there before the window opens so your gear is rigged when the light starts to change.

To pick the stage of the tide that works best at your spot, keep reading with our guide to fishing the tides.