Water temp 46, clear, seasonal declining weeds, fished 10am to 4pm. Got my son-in-law and his cousin out for Veterans Day, each had two Iraq tours while in the service, one Army and one Marine. Had good action from mainly small fish but we did get one nicer one around 40" and lost one other around that size. The cousin got his first musky, my son-in-law got his first with me last year. Line guide and level-wind freeze up issues until 1pm so we mostly trolled with mono until the afternoon, action both trolling and casting.
Did have an early afternoon flurry right on the minor, I still monitor the majors and minors and find activity within those times a fair amount of the time, though the windows can still be away from those times. If I had to guess over the years without reviewing my log records, it may be about half the response in those times, have outside of it, and since they are a smaller portion of the total time out, to me they're significant but not a huge influence, not a reason to let up on the effort outside of those times.
Nice work Joe. Sounds like that lake is growing into a real nice fishery for the future.
To your point on moon, I have noticed in my record logs that moon seems to play a much bigger role in windows in the spring and the fall, where weather changes seems to be a more determining factor for activity in the summer. Not sure if theres something to it, or if its just variance to my small sample size, but I definitely pay alot of attention to the moon phases and it seems like they really do have an effect on the fish. But like you said, definitely not a reason to let up on effort at times outside of the moon "windows".
"jasonvkop" said:
Do you guys look at the moon after the fact and see if it made a difference or do you know moon phase times going into the day and fish according to it?
I always know the moon times and fish prime spots at prime times….And for what it is worth Adam's 56.75" ate on the peak of the June full moon major.
I always check the moon phases before heading out. Its definitely not the most important factor in activity windows but I've seen it work too many times to deny it does play a factor in fish activity. That being said, weather always seems to trump moon. You could have the perfect moon situation possible but if the weather is bad, the moon doesnt seem to do much for them and on the flip side of that, you could be in the "worst" solunar time on a bad moon day and a a sudden pressure change in weather could turn them on.
I check before going a fair amount of the time, and sometimes don't bother but if decent action I'll check later to see if there was a correlation. Good points on the weather including the summer showing moon less important than spring and fall, I think that may be the case in my records but would have to review them (all pen to paper records since 1986, and ages ago I knew I should convert it to a modern method so I could extract info…but was too lazy… then the job of entering all the data became too daunting so I never did it…)
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