Fishing Journals

[flyfishermanj]

Was wondering how many members here keep a journal of their fishing trips? I have two that I use, one is online and the other is handwritten. I keep track of conditions, insect activity and number of fish caught. I have referenced them in the past to help decide where to fish. Does anyone else do this?
JH

 

[dryflyguy]

I kept journals for the first 3-4 years that I flyfished back in the early '80's. I thought it would really be a help to see what hatches I saw on certain streams at specific times of the year, and expected to see the same thing at the same time year after year. I learned otherwise however. Colder, or warmer than normal winters can make a certain hatch appear a week or 2 later or earlier than normal. Also, the springtime conditions can also affect things.
So I decided that logging all that info from the past, didn't really mean much for the coming season, and quit doing it.

 

[tomgamber]

I did it one year while in Idaho...I just found it the other month...not detailed but I did it in a calendar book and just wrote the place the time and what was working or hatching...just for reference. Never got to refer to it..I moved the next year.

 

[Maurice]

I kept one for a couple years...between the time I lived near Pittsburgh and then after I moved to York. The biggest thing I got from it was that I really don't catch a lot of fish. Back then (9 years ago) I was fishing around 60-70 times a year averaging about 4 hours each. My total trout caught was around 250.

Average trout /trip around 4 and per hour less than 1. Now keep in mind I counted every hour and only trout to hand.

The last two years I just jotted it down on a piece of paper in the van. 2005 = 276 trout and 2006 = 297 Trips were about the same

I don't bother anymore because the difference is marginal. And I guess I suck at flyfishing.

This is why when I hear people saying they caught 1100 trout flyfishing last year or 600 or even 500...I have a hard time believing it. Count them and write it down and you will be surprised how few it amounts to.


Nevertheless...I cannot think of a better way to spend the day. Counting or not.

Although I know this notion of journals is about more than counting...I hope this doesn't hijack this thread

Maurice

 

[shipnfish2006]

I have a log that I keep for trout fishing where I write down the conditions for the day, how many I caught, what flies I was using, and make a note of the sizes. I used to keep a similar log for bass fishing, but I kind of got away from bass. This is actually my 10th year for my trout log and its pretty cool to go back and look at all of the years and just remember each trip. I used to get caught up in the amount I caught each year, but I now no longer care about numbers and am just out to enjoy the experience now and use the log as a guide of what streams to fishing during a particular time of the year and also give me a timeline of when specific hatches start showing up.

 

[Acristickid]

Seems like I am in the same boat. I started one this year and was very diligent about it until about june. I missed entering one trip then two, would try to go back an guesstimate and finally I had not wrote anything for a month and kinda gave up. I was just thinking this morning how many days I have gotten out this year. (I have fished by far the most this year) I think I am around 50 days. The number sure to be unmatched again as I got laid off about 2 weeks ago.

 

[ryanh]

I used to but it never really amounted to anything. My wife got me a really cool one with water color pictures in it. Well its raining about everytime I go out fishing so it is nothing but a blank mold colony now.

 

[sandfly]

I try to use one each trip, I have one paper one and one online one...http://www.mydailyfishinglog.com/ pretty cool, plus you can print it out,,, :-D

 

[jayL]

I've often thought about it... But once I get back from the stream, it's time to get other stuff done. I wouldn't take the time to do it then. I've often thought about bringing some pencils and a notebook to the stream with me. I fish very aggressively, moving a lot, and usually end up taking a breather every hour or two. It's during that time, sitting on a log or whatever, that I'd like to be able to write a thought or two. I'd also like to draw some scale sized pictures of the bugs I'm seeing. Sadly, I don't really have the space in my chestpack to carry a notebook, and I know it would get wet and moldy.

 

[afishinado]

I kept a FF log for a few years awhile back. The only thing that made it semi-useful was when I began using separate tabs for each stream I fished, instead keeping the log in chronological order. I recorded weather, stream conditions, stream locations, fly patterns, hatches, and fish caught. When I planned to fish a certain stream, I looked at the entries for that stream, to see what worked before during the same conditions. Also, during the zeal of my youth, I transferred the “data” to an Excel SS, and set up filters to sort by different variables. Keeping a detailed log was time consuming, and I began to realize that the info was not all that useful, since most of my fish came from the same runs and pools of the streams I fished regularly, and most were caught on the same few flies. Also, as someone else mentioned, hatch times seem to vary with each season and stream conditions. In addition, when flies start hatching and fish start rising on the stream in front of you, you don’t need a log to know what fly to fish, or where to fish.

I haven’t logged info or even counted the number of fish I caught in a long time, but last year my interest was piqued by a similar conversation on this board about the number of days fished in a season, and the number of fish caught. So this season, while I didn’t keep a detailed log, I wrote in on a calendar the name of the stream I fished, and the number caught, similar to what Maurice did.

So far this year, I logged 39 days of fishing, and caught 378 fish: 29 trips trout fishing – 266 trout caught, and 10 trips smallmouth fishing – 112 SM’s caught. I didn’t log it, but I’d say the average time I spent fishing was between 4 and 5 hours per trip. The average winter trout fishing trip yielded just over 3 fish, while trout fishing during the spring and early summer, my average # of fish caught was just over 10, with some 20+ and 30 fish days that upped the average. I didn’t and don’t fish for trout very often in the summer. I turn my attention to the smallies because they’re a blast, and the trout deserve a break. While the fall is a great time of year to be out fishing because of the weather and the fall foliage, I’ll bet my average catch of trout will decline from now until the end of the year, since I always seem to catch bigger but fewer fish in the fall.

I suppose a fly fisherman spending 100 or so days on the water during a season, fishing in prime water, and fishing a lot during the most productive times of the year, could catch 1,000 fish in a season. I’d like to give it a try some day.

 

[pete41]

I started to keep one because the ``experts'' all said it was so important to do so.
Its not-
Go where your heart takes you,fish the way you want so that you always have that satisfied feeling of a day well spent.

 

[rrt]

I have kept one since 1967. I did it to help recall successful and unsuccessful trips. I now occasionally pick one of the old notebooks up and browse through it. "Oh, yeah, I remember that," is why I keep writing things down. Days I have forgotten sometimes come back to my old noggin as I look through an old notebook. Mine include both hunting and fishing days. During cold, miserable winter days when I am tired of tying flies, I like to pick up an old journal, sit down by the woodburner, and look through it. On the down side: fish I have remembered as being 17 or 18 inches have often shrunk an inch or so when I encounter them in the journal! Imagine that.

 

[shipnfish2006]

afishinado wrote:
I suppose a fly fisherman spending 100 or so days on the water during a season, fishing in prime water, and fishing a lot during the most productive times of the year, could catch 1,000 fish in a season. I’d like to give it a try some day.

It's called not having a job or girlfriend and A LOT of free time. I did the 1000+ deal for 3 years while in college mostly fishing heavily stocked and very abundant wild trout streams. However my most treasured memories are the days I broke 5 on Falling Springs, where the experience was well worth more than catching 20 trout per trip. I no longer feel I need to catch 1000 trout in a season in order for it to be successful. I like to think of it as being more appreciative of the time I spend on the water now that I have significantly less time to fish.

 

[afishinado]

Shipnfish wrote: "I broke 5 on Falling Springs, where the experience was well worth more than catching 20 trout per trip...……... I no longer feel I need to catch 1000 trout in a season in order for it to be successful. I like to think of it as being more appreciative of the time I spend on the water now that I have significantly less time to fish."


Well said, I also get satisfaction from fishing in tough places too, where fooling a few fish there is more satisfying than landing a boatload of them on an easier stream. Falling Springs is a good one, the Letort, Valley Creek, even the Delaware River also come to mind.

For me, my wish was more about having the time to fish 100+ days without having to squeeze in a few hours of fishing after work, or on weekends between home projects and other obligations. As I get older I seem to appreciate every minute on the water even more, whether I’m catching fish or not.

 

[lestrout]

Not only have I kept some form of written record since I first started fishing (spinning for gills), for the last several decades, I carry a tape recorder on stream to record anything interesting, including the bird calls. My favorite sound is a screaming drag.

I then distill some of the info to an Excel spreadsheet, which I have macros on so that start and stop times automatically translate into hours consumed doing the act. I have columns for YTD and total time on lines, reels, and rods. Since I'm evaluating waders, I transfer time in use to a separate spreadsheet.

Yes - I also count trouts. I do this now more to track productivity (in terms of trouts landed) now rather than the raw total number. In this way I can decide on a given water (I ffish many different ones, as well as new ones) on a given time of season, what several hours might be the best time to hop in the water. I have a short attention span, so if I can't reasonably expect several trouts an hour, I have lots of other things I enjoy doing, such as smoking a pipe with my dog (he's not a smoker), reading in the sunlight, listening to the stream, doing Sudoku.

Since I ffish many dozens of rods and reels/lines, I rarely use the same combination - I keep another spreadsheet to track the combinations and often use it to select what rod/reel/line I will start off with on an outing.

For the fellow who felt every season's being different nullified the advantages of writing things down: I used to spreadsheet air and water temps with the Beaverkill to decide which 3 days I would go up there to hit the Hendricksons - since every year it was different. In the course of doing this, along with days of sun and water levels, I got pretty good at forecasting several weeks ahead when to show up. Now I do it intuitively, but the graphs I created and studied sped up my learning curve.

This doesn't take as much time as you think - taping on the stream is reflexive now, and the macros on the Excels take only several minutes for the input. It's good to reflect how the day went and what to improve and what to keep (not the trouts - the methods, fly patterns, etc.) Daily tracking of my investments takes longer, and that takes very little time .

Maurice - shame on you for not finding more productive water! In the days when numbers meant more to me, I actually found spots where I got up to 128 wild trouts in an especially productive morning (this is all on tape, rushing water and splashes and all). Actually, it's hard to remember how many you've caught when there are a lot of misses and LDR's and when you get past about 25 landed. Another reason to tape for me.

Now, when I get 3 or 4 trouts on a fly, I switch to see what else works. And after a couple of dozen trouts, unless the hatches are changing, I quit or go practice casting - once I've figured out what is working, a lot of the challenge is gone.

Last - another benefit to tracking, and therefore learning, is that I can help other folks who want to try out new water with pretty good advice - since I have a history on catch rates, hatches, etc.

Oh yah - I don't nymph. If I did, unless I was going for a big count, I would guess that a Zebra, Weenie, PT, Vurm, Stone, GRHE and honeybug would be about all you would need. And then what would I do with all that fly tying stuff? I think in that case I also wouldn't feel the need to keep much in the way of records. Besides, it's too hard.

tl
les

 

[Maurice]

lestrout wrote:
Not only have I kept some form of written record since I first started fishing (spinning for gills), for the last several decades, I carry a tape recorder on stream to record anything interesting, including the bird calls. My favorite sound is a screaming drag.

I then distill some of the info to an Excel spreadsheet, which I have macros on so that start and stop times automatically translate into hours consumed doing the act. I have columns for YTD and total time on lines, reels, and rods. Since I'm evaluating waders, I transfer time in use to a separate spreadsheet.

Yes - I also count trouts. I do this now more to track productivity (in terms of trouts landed) now rather than the raw total number. In this way I can decide on a given water (I ffish many different ones, as well as new ones) on a given time of season, what several hours might be the best time to hop in the water. I have a short attention span, so if I can't reasonably expect several trouts an hour, I have lots of other things I enjoy doing, such as smoking a pipe with my dog (he's not a smoker), reading in the sunlight, listening to the stream, doing Sudoku.

Since I ffish many dozens of rods and reels/lines, I rarely use the same combination - I keep another spreadsheet to track the combinations and often use it to select what rod/reel/line I will start off with on an outing.

For the fellow who felt every season's being different nullified the advantages of writing things down: I used to spreadsheet air and water temps with the Beaverkill to decide which 3 days I would go up there to hit the Hendricksons - since every year it was different. In the course of doing this, along with days of sun and water levels, I got pretty good at forecasting several weeks ahead when to show up. Now I do it intuitively, but the graphs I created and studied sped up my learning curve.

This doesn't take as much time as you think - taping on the stream is reflexive now, and the macros on the Excels take only several minutes for the input. It's good to reflect how the day went and what to improve and what to keep (not the trouts - the methods, fly patterns, etc.) Daily tracking of my investments takes longer, and that takes very little time .

Maurice - shame on you for not finding more productive water! In the days when numbers meant more to me, I actually found spots where I got up to 128 wild trouts in an especially productive morning (this is all on tape, rushing water and splashes and all). Actually, it's hard to remember how many you've caught when there are a lot of misses and LDR's and when you get past about 25 landed. Another reason to tape for me.

Now, when I get 3 or 4 trouts on a fly, I switch to see what else works. And after a couple of dozen trouts, unless the hatches are changing, I quit or go practice casting - once I've figured out what is working, a lot of the challenge is gone.

Last - another benefit to tracking, and therefore learning, is that I can help other folks who want to try out new water with pretty good advice - since I have a history on catch rates, hatches, etc.

Oh yah - I don't nymph. If I did, unless I was going for a big count, I would guess that a Zebra, Weenie, PT, Vurm, Stone, GRHE and honeybug would be about all you would need. And then what would I do with all that fly tying stuff? I think in that case I also wouldn't feel the need to keep much in the way of records. Besides, it's too hard.

tl
les

I am impressed with your diligence to keep that detailed of a record. Don't you ever get skunked? I mean 128 TPH in the morning...thats like 20.1333 tph from sun up to noon. Man thats busy?

All those records...well how many trouts did ya catch per hour last year Les?

I do fish productive water...I am just not very good I guess. Well, at least I am enjoying myself. If I was playing youth soccer....I'd get a trophy each year. :lol:

 

[pete41]

I once caught 50 just stocked trout in a morning on Young Womans creek. I was just starting so I thought that was pretty good.
128 wild trout in a morning-one every 3 minutes for six staight hours.Wow -speechless for once in my life.

 

[dryflyguy]

128 fish in one morning - that is some pretty outstanding fishing.
If I can catch 5-6 fish per hour, I consider that a great catch rate.
This reminds me of a claim a few years ago by one of my buddies.
He said that he fished one morning below the now gone McCoy Dam on spring creek, and caught 127 trout in 3 hours - on tricos. All wild fish on a highly pressured trout stream none the less! Doing the math on that, I figured out that he caught a fish something like every 80-90 seconds!
Not even taking into account time for changing flies, that would be an amazing accomplishment!
Now, I'm not disputing your catch in that one morning. But I really have my doubts about my buddies claim

In all my years of fishing, there is only one place where I know I managed to catch 100 in one day. A certain spot on Kettle Creek where it's just loaded with stocked fish and they rise like crazy. They're admittedly very easy to catch. It's like fishing in a hatchery. And I also fished morning til dark

 

[brookieaddict]

I guess i fit in with most of us, i kept one years ago ,even bought the leather bound ones but when i bought a small digital camera , the journals went to the basement. I now can bring up all the pics when needed and laugh at the memorys.

 

[lestrout]

Maurice - looking at my Excel journal, out of 76 days on the water this year, I got skunked 5 times, which is a little high. I use the database to decide when and where to go to minimize the skunk, but early in the season, when I am scoping out water to predict how the rest of the year on a stretch might pan out, I'll explore.

Funny thing - these days, it's the trouts I DON'T catch which are the ones that bring me back. If they are too easy, I look for fussier trouts. If I think I know what they're eating, after confirming with a few on a couple of matching flies, I move on.

That 128 trouts morning started at 6:40am and I kept at it for 4.4 hrs. So my catch rate was 29.0/hr. My left hand never dried out and got pretty slimy. I used a lot of Abolene and didn't switch flies as much as I usually do. I was actually checking durability of some of my patterns - I aim for a minimum of 2 dozen per fly for the pattern to earn a place in my A box.

Needless to say, I was uncermoniously hauling them in, since (I knew this from listening to tapes on several earlier sessions on the hot spot) once the sun hit the water, the rising would taper off. I didn't know for sure what my count was until I played the tape back. It did feel like one of those hunnert trouts mornings, but until I get a verification off the tape, I don't put a number into the database. BTW, I listened to the tape while driving home, which is also when I dry off silk lines if I happen to be using one. I don't really like to eat up time at home listening to the tapes unless I'm doing some serious trip planning.

The TPH that year was 2.55 landed. I don't count them unless I can kiss them (usually don't though). Best TPH for a year was 3.02, but as long as there is action in the form of sighted risers reacting to my flies, I'm happy.

tl
les