Moon Fishing
Last week we enjoyed one of the most famous moons of the year, the Harvest Moon. Did you have trouble falling asleep? Did you discover that you had gain weight? Hospital emergency rooms have long reported a rise in trauma cases on the night of a full moon especially if it coincides with a weekend.
What does a round ball of rock floating around plant Earth have to do with the behavior of human beings? No one knows but the theorists propose that it has something to do with the gravitational force the moon asserts on our planet. We know this force is powerful enough to control the tides so maybe it can also to a milder extent control us.
Avid fisherman know it has an effect on when fish will go after a bait in larger numbers than at any other time. By avid I mean those brave souls who do their fishing at night. The stalwart maintain the best time to be on your favorite lake or pond fishing is sandwiched in-between the two hours when the moon is directly overhead. This can be expanded to halfway between moonrise and moonset. When the moon is gone from the sky so are the fish.
For the daylight fisher-people, maybe they are down under. The moon revolves around the earth so when it is directly on the opposite side we have, to a lesser degree, the same two hours before and after situation which gives credence to support the theory of the superiority of night fishing.
My research didn’t consider those time when we can see the moon during the day, but I will take a leap of faith and mention this may also the a good time to drop a line in the water. Nor did it give any indications of the effect of times changes – human considerations doesn’t have much to do with the moon and fishing.
But what about the moon’s phase? How does it play into the equation? Again, I turn to the pundits who say more fish are caught during the new moon phase – giving the same plus or minus two hours before and after the moon is high in the sky.
Back to the Big Fellow (the full moon) then we are into the same four hour cycle on or near the date of the fully moon. Fishing during this period is okay but doesn’t have quite the attractiveness of a new moon.
The people who keep statistics report that fish are less likely to bite near the first and third quarters of the moon. How are the fish treating you? Drop a note to sanoalmanac@g-mail.com like the famous reporters of old I will not reveal my sources as to where the fish are biting.
