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Information on the Fishing Notebook. How to take notes and keep a log for better fishing.
Fishing Notebook Most fishermen keep records of their catches, yet very few keep notebooks and relate those catches to the water and weather. A real record is one thing which can make your angling more interesting and productive. What type of weather did you have when you took your best fish last year or last month? It isn't enough for your notes to say it was sunny, overcast, or rainy. Get a barometer reading. Indicate in your notes whether it was at the end of a stormy period, at the approach of a storm, or clear. Eventually you will find a pat tern of weather which gives you your best catches. The Fisherman's Notebook Your notes should also show the time of day which produced best for you, and the lure you used. But that isn't all. Another place a notebook comes in handy is in making a map of your best fishing spots. This is especially desirable when you are fishing lakes or large rivers. Such flat water is hard to distinguish unless you give your self a few "fixes'* by mapping in landmarks which pinpoint your exact location. Quite often there will be a rock ledge, shoal, or such in mid-lake, which is a hot spot indeed. One day you are fishing and drop onto it. After a wonderful, successful excursion you return to camp. When you look out across the wide expanse of water, remembering your luck and hoping for a repeat, can you return to the exact spot? It is highly unlikely, unless you take the precaution of making a sketch while you are actually on the spot. Keeping a Fishing Log Here is how I do it. I mark a point on the paper to represent my fishing "hot spot/' and then I make note of two prominent objects on either shore. These are sketched in. A line is drawn between them across my point, and I now have one direction. Be sure to pencil in a full description of these two landmarks. A bearing with a compass is always helpful, though not essential. Another observa tion at right angles to these is then taken. Then a line is drawn to bisect my first line at the hot-spot fishing location. With this rough sketch, I can find it again without trouble. My notebook doesn't stop here, though. Along with my rough, map of this hot spot, I make a note of the time of day when the fish ing was best, the water depth at which I had my best luck, and the lure used. All this will give me better than an even chance of getting a repeat. For, when next season rolls around, I will be read ing that notebook, canvassing the possibilities of spending a day fishing. Here it is midJune, say. What did I do last year at this time? I ready my notes on the water I fished last June and come to a sketch of some favored water which produced. That gives me better than an even chance of getting action without too much exploring around for some good fishing. There is another very good use of a map, too. Occasionally one loses a valuable piece of equipment overboard. If you map the locality carefully, it is a very easy matter to return to the exact spot with suitable equipment and recover the gear. Last season, a fisher man trolling a lake lost a valuable casting rod. I helped him make a map of the spot, just as I would have mapped it to pinpoint a good fishing location. This enabled him to return later with a heavy cord, well weighted to keep it on the bottom, and with plenty of fishhooks attached to it. By dragging it back and forth over the previously mapped spot he picked up his rod and reel from about thirty feet of water. The most successful fly fisherman with whom I have ever fished is an inveterate map maker. That was a part of his fishing technique that wasn't apparent while watching him on a trout stream. What was apparent was that he always seemed to be in the right spot at the right time to take trout. During an evening's fishing with him I had declined to fish the pools first; instead, I followed him on the water. It worked out very well, too. I simply cast the same fly patterns he was using a size 14 Blue Upright in the forepart of the evening, and a size up to a number 10 during the last part of our fishing. I took pains to deliver my fly from about the same positions he used, and to about the same approximate spots. All this added up to a pattern of angling which was very successful. He passed without a second glance some sec tions of the stream that, had I been alone, I would have worked carefully with my flies. While sitting on the bank of the stream, talking the last golden haze away after limiting out, I asked about his fishing. Out of his fishing jacket he brought a well-worn notebook. In it each pool was drawn, and over each sketch there were cross marks where trout had taken a fly. The time of season, the best fly, and method were all carefully noted. What a whale of a lot of information he had about his local trout stream. "How about that water you passed, just below Red Barn Pool?" I asked. 'It looked good to me." 'Take a look at this," he replied, handing me his notebook. "Notice how that pool began failing about the middle of June? Not much use to bother with it now in July. But look at the way it picks up late in autumn." All the data on this particular piece of water certainly spelled out early spring and late autumn fishing. I examined the marginal notes on his maps and sketches. Hatches were neatly penciled in: the kind, the date they occurred, and their duration. Tlie entire book pinpointed the right time, and the right place. Suppose it is the first of August. You turn to such a well-mapped stream, and you have notes. "Small blue may fly over the water. Hatch started at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It built up in intensity until a half hour before dark. Concentrated on the quiet water."
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