I disagree a little bit with that summary. Time on the water is definitely the most important, but it might be tough for some to remember that there were, for example, clouds of sandeels in some cove, on a certain stage of the tide, with a certain wind, on a specific moon, during a certain year, where they found a school of 20lb bass pushing them onto the beach. Now when next year comes around during the same moon but the wind is different, so the sandeels are not visible and are not being pushed up, but they are still there, you know you should check because the bass are back again, only in a slightly different spot, not feeding so obviously.
I can't remember exact events correlated to each moon every year without a little help from a log. And after a while you can at a minimum correlate certain bait activity to other bait activity in a different area, i.e. if you find shrimp spawning in a certain place at a certain time you can be sure that there are silversides staging at the same time in another area, or something like that.
But then again, you are right about the general fishery stuff. If you know how to fish the waves or inlets you will always catch fish, but a log can help you try to pattern your area over the years and there is certainly no harm in trying to do that. Especially when it comes to bait. Even if you never succeed, you always learn something.
I'd recommend starting one to anyone who plans to fish a certain area for a long time. The best commercial fisherman have been doing it for years, and I bet most good charter captains do too. And they fish a lot. But then again, if you don't want to do it, you can still catch fish.  |