Anyone else want to love the technical side of fishing? Well too late, here we go with analysising the moon transits and phases. In general, we you have an opposing lunar transit you will catch more fish as they are more active. People either love the full moon (as it brings out more activity or hate it because they are believed to eat all night therefore not in the mood of biting during the day). I tend to think it is more about being at the transit as opposed to a particular phase. How else would we explain these captain boats getting limit almost every day?
Moon Tranist is when the moon is either directly overhead. I think we get more fish when we are opposite the moon transient (moon at moon rise or at the horizon) and then about 2 hours after. Find the moon rise time and be on the fishing grounds then, hopefully you will have your limit in two hours.
There are a seemingly endless amount of varibles in fishing. How many of these varibles you get right as opposed to wrong decides how many fish you catch. I do think it is sometimes a numbers game, meaning there are so many little fish mixed in witht he bigger ones sometimes you just need to catch more fish to get more keepers. I guess that is the main difference between the pros and those of us that just have a good time fishing.
Without question it does matter, we have been very successful this year where others have not. Why is the question. Here are some of the factors that I pay attention to:
- How clear is the sky? Change you baits based on if they sparkle in sun light or need to dazzle the fish with zero sun.
- Kind of bait? This does seem to change every year but without question umbrella rigs are bigger producers year to year.
- How deep? For this years striper I think fairly close to bottom, may 5-8 feet above.
- Tatics? Again for this year, when I see a school of fish on the bottom I do a “crazy Ivan” (yep from the Tom Clancy novel “Hunt for Red October”. I think dropping the baits down with the turn then bringging them up quickly by straightening out makes a big difference.
- Weather? Well sometimes you can’t wish for better weather but fish do not like a pressure lowering quickly. So if you have to get up leaves because rain is coming you may as well go do it because fishing doesn’t seem to be as good anyway.