Salmon: Tides vs. Time of Day

I think this has been touched upon in a number of threads, but perhaps not discussed directly.  

When targeting salt water migrating salmon, is tide or time paramount?  Which tide?  When do they travel?  How do they orient themselves when traveling?  When holding?  Obviously the answers to these questions affect where and how we should fish for them.  Another factor, somewhat independent of the questions above, when do salmon tend to feed?  In the morning after fasting at night?  Whenever they can?  On the move?  While holding?  One may be able to locate fish using tide information, but if they are not biting ...

My personal assumptions have been that salmon travel in with the incoming tide, then hold on the outgoing.  This strategy would use less energy.  This would also mean they would be swimming with the tidal current, which seems contrary to the common belief that salmon orient into the current.  Perhaps orientating into the current is a holding behavior.  

Perhaps big fish just hug the bottom where friction slows the tidal current and largely ignore the tides.  

Here is a reference to an interesting book.  The page has a preview function - start on page 53.
http://books.google.com/books?id=qXyJqWu2J5wC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=salmon+tide+behavior&source=bl&ots=b05HEIQSH6&sig=47mOQ3QzV2jd7XT5sek6EdO8bjk&hl=en&ei=toplTLqwIpDSsAObl8DODw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Good observations, mainly correct. Tide changes seem to bring on the bite. Early morning tide changes have always been the best for me, but any tide change will be a good time to try. In the salt or lower tidewater, I try to always troll in the same direction the tide is running, or sideways to it, but not against it.
If you troll against the tide, you aren't moving much, and aren't showing your lure/bait to as many fish. I think it may not be as natural a presentation, either, to troll against the current.
Up in the lower rivers, though, sometimes you must troll upstream. I like moderate tide changes for this, heading up with the incoming, trolling around the upper end of my favorite stretch both upstream and downstream until the tide changes and starts dropping, then trolling back down.  I usually don't do this on the more extreme tide changes, though. I'm often trolling spinners up there, too. Not herring, like I do in the salt.

Forgot to mention that salmon will often hold until the low tide change, and then move upstream with that. Kings often will travel up along the edges of the deepest part of the river bed, hugging the bottom, and hold along the edges under overhangs of the high muddy cutbanks, or the bottoms of the deepest pools. They seem to stay deep, unless they come up to roll.
I remember one morning when I was standing on the bank of a river down in the tidal flux, casting a spinner for over four hours on the outgoing tide. Nothing. It was almost 11 am already, and the cloud cover was burning off. I almost gave up when i decided that I might as well fish thru the tide change.
Suddenly, I noticed a large King roll right out in front of me, then I spotted several fish moving by. A good school of Kings was passing right in front of me! One grabbed my spinner, and after 25 minutes of work and mayhem, I landed it. No net, I had to tail it. It was my biggest King ever, a 31.5 lb hen.

Those Kings probably had been holed up downstream somewhere until the tide changed, then started swimming upstream!

I have no experience in river fishing for kings or silvers, all my time is spent on the Sound or Strait, and years ago, in the big Sounds on west coast of Vancouver Island.  Generally a high slack at dawn is best, remember that salmon follow bait----an exchange of 4--6 feet is good, bigger swings mean more current, and convention has it that kings shun current.  But salmon don't read....I have caught big fish on all stages of the tide, ebb, flood, and slack.
    Knowing the bottom structure is important in doping out the eddies that hold bait, some places like Pillar Point hold fish on both the ebb and the flood.   If you van find kelp beds close to deep water, and a tide change at dawn, you're in for some action.  Down here in area 11 around Vashon, local habit is to fish Gig Harbor, point Richmond  and Point Defiance on the ebb, and points Dalco and Piner on the flod.  Point Robinson can be fished on all stages of the tide, Point Beals the same, and Dolphin Point fishes best on the ebb.  Rule of thumb---fish the "windward" side of the points where bait is pushed up by the current, and try the lee side of steep points for eddy-current holding water.   Since salmon generally swim into the current, trolling with the current means the fish see you gear coming, they will turn to pursue if it looks inviting.    On big tides, both bait and salmon will be carried along, even though they're swimming into the current.  In Commencement bay, everything is swept north on the ebb, the first good spot to intercept salmon is the Slag Pile, there's a set of 3 rips that form offshore, and big whirlpool eddies north of the point that hold fish.  The fish generally suspend 60-70 feet in 200-220 feet of water.  Bad part is that the seals and sea lions have made Point Defiance their cafeteria, increading common is that curses and screams when a nice king is taken by the pinnipeds.  I lost a nice king to a sea lion at Dalco, he got himself hooked with my big McMahon spoooon, and spooled me.  Great fight but I lost my favorite 7-inch spoon when the sea lion sounded in 400 feet of water!
   I plan to fish Willapa Bay in trhe Hobie  at the end of the month, nice fresh kings come into the bay with the incoming tide, feeding on candlefish (anchovies???) and drift back into the ocean on the ebb, unless there's enough rain to make the fish stay in the rivers that empty into the bay, and spawn.  You can spend  lifetime learning the water and the habits of the fish, and then they'll cross you up and do the opposite of what you expect!!!
 
   
   

Best advice I have found on salmon and tides is to remember that the fish position themselves with their noses INTO the current, and you want to fish by bringing your bait or lure toward the fish, not pull it over them from behind. So, you fish with the tide, not against it.