Fishing Log info

[Seanstone]

I converted my fishing log to an excel file the other day so I could make some calculations and what not. Here's some of my stats so far.

98 Trips (34 river trips/ 57 lake trips/ 7 pond trips.)
656.5 Hours with wet lines (not all have been for cats.)

Caught 726 fish so far
Cats
1 Bullhead (Largest:1lb 1oz)
6 Blues (30lbs 2oz)
6 Flatheads (12lbs 14oz)
76 Channels (10lbs 14oz)

Other
373 Bluegill
3 Buffalo
25 Crappie
17 Drum
1 Gar (Longnose)
122 Largemouth Bass
92 Hybrid Striped Bass
25 Perch
4 Smallmouth
2 Saugeye
8 Rainbow Trout


Not real pleased with the total number of blues and flats this year, but the channels seemed to be biting well (Broke my pb Channel 4 times). The bullhead numbers were low as well....in comparison to past years. Still hoping for a few blues and channels before the new year. I have a goal of 100 cats, we'll see what happens.

[Smoothkip]

Thanks for the update! I never even kept a log this year that's how bad my year went.

[rcbbracing]

Do you keep a log of catches only or do you also record things like water temp moon phase and fishing locations? Just curious if you have been able to pattern the fish and use it following years successfully.... thanks

[Seanstone]

Yes, yes, and yes. I do keep track of water temp , moon phase and location. What do you want to know specifically? Moon phase this year has had little to no impact on fishing success. We have a system that gives a point value for each fish. Based on size in relation to the state record of the given species. This allows us to measure quality of each fishing trip regardless of species. For example a 7 pound largemouth bass would be the equivalent of a 40 pound flathead, or a 15 pound channel. We calculate the amount of points of all fish caught in a day of fishing and then divide by the number of hours spent fishing. We then average the best moon phases, good moon phases, and the poor moon phases in order to get a measure of quality per hour per moon phase. Last time I calculated the average for each moon phase I believe that poor had the least fish caught per hour, then best and then Good moon phases had the highest rate of success. There was little difference between the poor and best phases. Hope that's not too confusing. I can explain more if your interested.

[Smoothkip]

Do you record barometric pressure of your trips also Sean? I would like to hear your take on that also.

[bobkyle2]

Thats pretty neat

[Seanstone]

We haven't recorded barometric pressure yet. Never thought of it to tell you the truth. We do record weather patterns, air temp, times, and specific times of the picture worthy fish. I'm sure I could find the pressure of each trip in the past. Might look into that. I have noticed lately that wind patterns have more impact of fishing than I previously had thought. Not so much as direction of the wind but changes of direction and or increased or decreased velocity. Last night for example the fog made wind direction easy to judge. For the most part the wind was coming from the east, then it stooped and shifted to the south. Immediately two rods load, only landed one fish were though. Next year I will incorporate our wind direction into my log to see if south and west are indeed better winds to fish than east and north.

My actual log is on my computer in oxford, and I'm on thanksgiving break now. So I can address these, and any other questions with stats/hard numbers. This Sunday when I get back. Keep the questions coming and ill do my best to answer them.

[gotmehooked]

so based on your results what conditions(overcast, temp of water, time of day, etc...) have seemed to produce A. the biggest catfish? and B. The most numbers?

[Skyline1506]

we always track barometeric pressure, but i am with kip no log this year due

[Seanstone]

A little recap on the qualitative "point system". We use a system to measure quality of each fish rather than quantity of fish. We give each fish a set amount of points based on their ratio of size to state record. (All state records are set at 40 points.) A channel catfish would then be worth 1 point per pound, because the state record is 37.6 pounds. (Obviously rounding up.) A Flathead would be worth .5 a pound, because the state record is 76.5 pounds. (Again rounding up.) Each fish is given points in a similar fashion.

Here's an example of a day of fishing, lets assume its 8 hours.

2 Channel Catfish, 7 pounds 7oz, 4 pounds 11oz.
1 Flathead Catfish, 12 pounds 5oz
2 Largemouth bass, 1 pound 2oz, 2 pound 13oz

On this given day you would have earned 11 points in channel cats, 6 points in flathead cats, and 9 points in largemouth. (State record is 13 pounds....so they would be worth 3 points per pound. Altogether you would have earned 26 points in 8 hours of fishing. (26 points/ 8 hours= 3.25 points per hour.) Essentially this is how our system works.....without confusing things too much. Other rules have been made.....such as 10 bluegill are worth .5 points (Because half pound bluegills are quite rare.), and each fish is given a base amount of points even if its under a pound. If anyone is interested in knowing the whole system, I can explain it.

So......Here's the moon phase data:

Poor: 49 TRIPS, 325.5 Hours Spent, 1.356 Points Per Hour (Qualitative measure mentioned above)

Good: 38 TRIPS, 243 Hours Spent, 1.74 Points Per Hour

Best: 14 TRIPS, 102.5 Hours Spent, 1.282 Points Per Hour

The good moon phases on average have produced higher quality fish and better trips for us this year. Poor ranked second, and the Best moon phases produced less fish or less quality fish.

I'm still working on the other stats...and I'll get them posted asap.

[Seanstone]

Here's a bar graph of the points per hour by date. Pretty self explanatory, Date is on the x axis and points per hour on the y axis. Our best months were July, August, and September for consistent fishing, primarily due to a hot channel cat bite, but the stats were also padded by hybrid striped bass from the river. Water temp would correlate to higher quality fish as well.

Highest points per hour this year for me came on April 21 from a farm pond. Caught quite a few half pound crappie and some 2 plus pound bass. 9.5 point per hour average. As seen on the graph.

I also set a record for most points in one trip this year as well. I had 76 points in 12 hours while fishing the Ohio river. On that trip I caught a 10 pound 14oz channel cat, 2 drum (5 pound 11oz, and 8 pound 5oz), a 4#14oz Flathead, and 8 Hybrid Striped bass ranging from 1-3 pounds each. Nothing amazing, but a fun trip to say the least. We have had dozens of trips over 50 points this year.

[Seanstone]

Here's a set of numbers that represents my fishing this year by location. Each row represents a different body of water we fished. The first column represents number of trips, second represents hours spent, third column represents total points, and the last column represents points per hour. Sorry don't wanna give away the locations publicly. Pm me if you wanna know something.

Loc......Trips........Hours.........Points.........Points Per hour
River A: 1.............3..................9................ 3
Lake A: 3.............10..............13.................1.3
Lake B: 2...............2................7.................3.5
River B: 5..............22.5............7................0.311111111
Lake C: 2...............6...............2.5.............0.416666667
River C: 28.............228..........553.5...........2.427631579
Pond A: 1................2...............19.................9.5
River D: 1................8...............4.5...............0.5625
Lake D: 32.............212.5...........250...............1.176470588
Pond B: 1................6...............25..................4.166666667
Pond C: 5................15..............24....................1.6
Pond D: 1................4.5.................6...................1.333333333
Lake E: 19..............151.5...........73.5 ............0.485148515


We thought Lake E was special and ended up fishing it way too hard in the spring. Had luck there last year though.....just didn't produce for us this year.

[Seanstone]

Heres a few of our largest fish of the year. I threw a few of each species in just to mix things up a bit. Order as follows:

fish(2011)/ Date/Time/Moon Phase/ Other conditions

47lb 10oz blue cat/ 5-28-2011/ 6:08pm/ Poor/ Little to no wind Sunny and 80 Degrees.

35lb Carp/ 5-15-2011/ 3:20pm/ Good/ Cold and Rainy

30lb 20z blue cat/ 5-28-2011/ 10:32pm/ Poor/ same as above

29lb blue cat/ 5-29-2011/ 1:05am/ Poor/ same as above

13lb 8oz flathead/ 6-13-2011/ 9:58pm/ Good/ Light Rain Showers

12lb 14oz flathead/ 10-28-2011/ 8:07am/ Good/ Warm night

11lb 2oz Channel Cat/ 7-30-2011/ 9:43pm/ Best/ Clear day...fog at night.

10lb 14oz channel cat/ 10-14-2011/ 1:38am/ Good/ Cold front moved in at night.


I'm not real sure if you can draw any conclusions from these numbers or not. In my opinion the best way to catch fish or large fish is to........simply fish.

The barometric pressure wasn't easy to find for each date so I couldn't do anything there. Let me know if I'm missing anything.

[Smoothkip]

That's really impressive the info you have gathered! As you said though anytime you can get out is the best time. I would really like to see what the barometer was doing on such days. I fish regardless but have seen some guys record the pressure on there trips and in there reports there seem to be a difference, not necessarily if they caught fish or not but more where! Such as shallow or deep. That info right there would reduce a lot of the guessing on which spots to fish on a certain night during a certain barometric pressure.

[Seanstone]

That would be interesting to know. I will definitely take note of barometric pressure and wind direction next year. I don't feel that there are any shortcuts in fishing....so that's really not the purpose of keeping a log for me. However it is nice to know that I caught 3 30 plus pound blues from this spot on this date last year, or that flathead were caught at this time when the water was this temp at that river. Stuff like that is interesting to me as the years progress. I like the fact that I can disprove certain myths that people claim to have about the best times to fish. For example moon phases are complete non-sense, our worst days consistently occur on the best moon phases. This was the case last year as well. It's really a toss up on wind direction though....I met an older gentleman who really knew his stuff and he lived by fishing the right winds. He claimed that west and south winds were the best and that on the big lakes like Erie it was common knowledge not to fish any other winds. So I really don't know.