I am a great believer in the affect of the sun and moon on our fishing success. Everybody and his dog has a solunar table. The value of some of these is debatable. Long time pro fisherman Joe Bucher has looked closely at legitimate stats to assess the value of these tables.
He wondered – Full Moon or Dark Moon? Major and minor solunar periods? Which is best? Does any of this moon mumbo jumbo make any real sense and is the theory legitimate?
In 1976, when Joe got into the fishing guide business full time, he carefully documented and compared fishing catches to a number of solunar charts. He was then able to compare hundreds of muskies, and thousands of bass and walleyes on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis to any printed solar/lunar reference.
One key entry was the time of day. His analysis convinced him that certain solar/lunar criteria simply had little or no daily influence. He came to the conclusion that most of the solunar tables published offered no real consistent correlation to fishing success and he gave up on them completely.
He couldn’t leave it alone though. Why? Because he ended up discovering a certain solar/lunar influence that really did work. In fact, it worked so well that it was hard to believe at first. His daily fishing logs had surely disputed the commonly accepted predictions, but they just as surely pointed to indisputable evidence that a “certain” solar/lunar factor warranted attention.
He in fact adopted a completely new respect about the solar/lunar theory. He confesses that he went from totally disbelieving to being totally convinced. In fact, He now affirms that he can predict the most probable daily, monthly and even yearly times when the biggest fish were most likely to be caught. He found that his method was right almost every single time!
He realized that the real secret to solar/lunar influences on a daily basis was nothing more than knowing when the sun and moon rose and set on a 24 hour basis. It was simply determining to the minute, when the sun came up and went down, and when the moon came up and went down each and every day. His 21 year old fishing log revealed without question that fish were active during a 90 minute window surrounding each one of these four daily influences.
Unfortunately many of today’s publications do not make their predictions based on these four vital factors. 1) sun rise, 2) sun set, 3) moon rise, and 4) moon set.
It’s certainly no secret that feeding movements of both fish and game have been traditionally accepted as key during dawn and dusk — this correlates with sun rise and sun set. Moon rise and set is a bit more tricky to key in on though since they can often occur at mid day or mid night.
The other “super secret” his logs identified was the predictable frequency of big fish catches during the peak moon phases of full and new moon. Specifically, a lot more big muskies, walleyes, and bass were taken right on the scheduled calendar day of both the full or new (dark) moon peak, and continued for a three to five day stretch afterwards. This means that if the full moon peak is on June 10th, June 10 thru 15 have great potential for trophies.
His conclusion is that you want to plan your fishing trips to hit the peak of the full or new moon. Then you want to be on your favorite big fish spots during the daily rise and set of both the sun and the moon.
He also discovered that he could add in another factor – the unpredictable third influence is local weather. Whenever a local weather change coincides with the daily rise or set of either the sun or the moon, during a peak monthly moon period, he expects to catch big fish. Given a severe summer T-storm right at sunset, and just before moon rise during the new moon period and it’s almost a sure bet he will catch big muskies or the year’s biggest catch of lunker walleyes.
The final decision – the rise and set of both the sun and moon has far more impact than any other daily sun or moon position. That is, bar none, the single most important daily triggering factor of both fish and game.Monthly peaks in both the full and new moon are a second factor definitely worth considering.
When fish of all sizes are feeding infrequently due to a prolonged streak of bad local weather conditions, that small “window” of three to four days right after the actual moon peaks, full or new, may be the only time that the largest fish of any species is truly catchable. Fishing during the daily rise or set of the sun and moon during these key monthly moon phases is paramount.
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