Rapid growth in response to prey abundance may be induced by environmental variability associated with resource subsidies. These periods of high resource abundance may occur at different points in recipient consumers’ development through variation in emergence patterns of prey between years or across a landscape. Spiders living in riparian areas are subject to frequent, episodic bursts of aquatic prey (subsidies). I examine how variable timing of subsidy abundance intersects with life history scheduling to produce different outcomes for individual spiders (Tetragnatha versicolor). Spiders fed at very high rates grew fastest but also showed evidence of increased mortality risk during moulting. T. versicolor is capable of exhibiting strong growth compensation—individuals suffering initial growth restriction were able to catch up completely with animals on a constant diet utilising the same amount of food. Spiders that received an early pulse of resources did worse on all measures of development and fitness than spiders that received either a constant supply of food or a late pulse of resources. Importantly, receiving large amounts of food early in life appears to actually confer relative disadvantages in terms of later performance compared with receiving subsidies later in development.