3 Reasons You Should Keep A Fishing Journal This Summer

A fishing journal, whether on paper in a notebook, or on one of the countless new apps and websites, is a place to log your observations, successes, and failures that will allow you to more effectively identify locations, patterns, and trends that can often be lost during the actual fishing.Here are three things a fishing journal can help you catch more and bigger fish:

1. A Fishing Journal Allows You To Track Patterns.

By logging where you catch a bass, and what you catch it on, you can over time see trends that are overlooked by many anglers. Say you’ve been catching fish skipping docks, and log each dock that you catch a fish under. Over the course of a summer, you can see precisely which docks are best, and in the future only target those that have the best success rate.

2. A Fishing Journal Helps You Adjust To Changing Conditions.

After a couple years of journaling, you’ll be able to quickly predict successful patterns and areas based upon past experience. If you’re on a reservoir with fluctuating depths, or fishing flooded water levels, you can check back through previous year’s data to find areas and patterns that worked when it was high before.

3. A Fishing Journal Allows You To Hone Your Presentations.

By logging what baits and colors were successful in the past, you’ll be able to minimize the amount of time you spend fishing with the wrong bait or color for the conditions. Over time you’ll know that the best jig color may be bluegill colored on one lake, or black and blue on another. You can also keep track of the little tweaks you made to frogs or other specific baits, and whether or not they were effective.