Simple Tides / Guides / Nantucket Tides

Nantucket Tide Chart

Nantucket — thirty miles out to sea — fishes a three-to-four-foot semidiurnal tide where Nantucket Sound’s rips concentrate bait and the island’s beaches give up stripers, blues, and bonito.

The pattern

Two highs and two lows daily with three to four feet of range. The Sound’s east-west tidal flow builds the famous rips — Sankaty, the Wauwinet gate — that make this island a current-fishing capital despite the modest range.

Rips and beaches

Striped bass hunt the rips on moving water, bluefish blitz the south shore, and bonito and false albacore streak through in late summer — the island’s fall run is legendary. Surfcasters work the beaches and the harbor jetties on the tides.

Boating

Nantucket Sound’s rips and shoals — and the island’s exposed moorings — demand tide awareness: the current runs hardest mid-tide. For the region, see our New England tide guide.