Keep a log-book:

[AndyS]

Keeping a log book is one of the greatest things you can do. At present I have 5 of them:

1.) Surf fishing
2.) Offshore fishing
3.) Inshore fishing
4.) Crabbing and clamming
5.) Freshwater fishing

Be sure to include:

1.) Date
2.) Time
3.) Location
4.) Weather

Many other things you can include, tides, moon phase, and observations.

My freshwater log book dates back to 1993.

I also use my log book for receipts, and all kinds of handwritten notes. In there I have posts I have printed out and saved from this website and a few others. If you fish a fair amount of time, after one year you will be amazed about how much you have written down. You will learn a lot from your OWN efforts when you go back and re-read your logbook. It really helps you to remember things, and what TO do again, and what NOT to do again. You can discover trends in fish, certain patterns they conform to. They are great to read in the middle of the winter when the snow is coming down at an inch an hour. Maybe even pass them down to the next generation.

[FishinAddict]

i have tried and failed ot get in the habit of logging my time. each time i set it up different; do you keep track by date or location? i imean a different page for each place you fish or a running tally in date order?
thanks in advance
FA

[AndyS]

I found these hard covered books with just lined pages. I write by date, then location, then anything else I can think of, wind, air temp, water temp, and just overall observations. If I caught anything I write that down, or if I caught nothing, I also write it down. It has saved me alot of time by not going back and making the same mistake twice. Now I can almost anticipate what is going to happen next, for example I wrote "mullet" in my surf book on Sept. 20th, so it kind of gives me a rough time line I can follow. Sometimes I write down an obsevation of just water temps, for example Nov. 3, 1996 the surf temp was 57*, and on Nov. 4, 1998 the surf temp was 56*, and so on. I also write down phone numbers and keep all my reciepts in there also.

[Reelron]

I found a pretty good log book at a sight called www.fishtaleslog.com. (I think someone brought this site up some time ago.) Plastic 3 ring binder type, that you can add pages to. It has different tabbed sections, for log pages, boat or equip.maint., reference for storing addresses & phone #. Even has a couple plastic pages for business cards.

Log pages are stored by month. So my number system is trip # for the year and last two digits of the year. So a trip today, for me, would be 37-10, filed under the August tab. I have been using it for 3 years, and it is just about full. I hope to get the rest of this year in and start a new one in 2011.

Each page has a lot of info on it: Location, Spot, day/date, Companions, Hours fished, GPS#, Weather Conditions (Broken down further by Barometric Pressure, WInd, Air Temp, etc.) Water Conditions, Tide/moon phase, Gear, structure, Bait.

Reverse side is for # & Type of fish caught, & Notes. I sometimes attach a picture to the page also.