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Keeping a Fishing Journal
By John Neporadny Jr.
In 1982 I decided to start recording my fishing trips in a journal. Now I have eight spiral notebooks full of details on my successes and failures on the water. The information I have accumulated over the years has become great reference material whenever I want to look back at how I caught bass during certain seasons and situations that I will be encountering on my next fishing trip. My journals have become even more valuable recently as my memory keeps getting worse.
Whether you enjoy fishing at the bass club level or aspire to turn pro someday, you will become a better angler by paying attention to details and keeping notes of your fishing experiences. “Every time I touch the water I’ve got notes,” said Brian Maloney, a Mexico, Mo. Bassmasters club member and 2008 BASS Federation Nation Championship qualifier.
Bassmaster Elite Series pro Brent Chapman has kept a filing system of notes, maps, tournament results and fishing articles ever since his formative years as a member of the Shawnee Mission Bassmasters club. “Putting together five years of club records actually gets pretty impressive to where a guy can look back at where he fished a club tournament at a particular lake and see what worked and what didn’t,” said Chapman. “It gives you a starting point and it may tell you what not to do. I wish I would have kept better records years ago. While my memory is pretty good and I remember most things about lakes, there are some things I can’t remember exactly.”
Both of these successful anglers have kept records of their fishing in a system that works best for them. Bass Club Digest takes a look at these two systems that club anglers can incorporate for their own record keeping.
Maloney’s spiral notepads
A 6-inch by 9-inch spiral notebook works best for Maloney’s record keeping system because it conveniently fits in his tackle box or glove compartment of his boat, which allows him to take notes while practicing for a tournament. Whenever he’s fishing for fun or competing in a tournament, Maloney keeps his notebook at home and records his notes later.
The Missouri angler strives for consistency when he jots down details of his day on the water. “You’ve got be consistent in your notes and you’ve got to tell the truth,” he says.
“I keep it relatively simple. I don’t describe exactly where every single fish comes out of. Remember that it is your notes, so if you need to go back five years you can find you are looking for. If you get too much detail the day of fishing might be lost in your memory because you have so many notes that you don’t understand what you wrote.”
Taking too many notes could lead to complacency eventually, which could develop inconsistencies in your record keeping. “You’ve got to be able to go back and compare the same notes you took so many years ago to this week’s notes so you can pick up on patterns,” Maloney said. “The thing the journal probably does for you more than anything is that you will see repeat trends and patterns.”
Maloney keeps track of the same details in every entry whether he’s fishing in a tournament or on an outing with the family. His entries begin with the lake he fished and the boat ramp where he launched. “I am more interested in the water temperature, the water level, current, weather and the zone (depth) that the fish are in,” says Maloney.
The club angler believes recording the water temperature and depth of the fish is critical in helping him develop patterns. “That is very important to me when I go back two, three or four years and pull out information such as when I found the water temperature stayed at 82 degrees in August at Lake of the Ozarks, I don’t have to worry about fishing deeper than 10 feet,” he said.
Other details Maloney records include the cover and structure he fished, moon phases (especially when the moon is full), weather conditions for two to three days leading up to his fishing trip and lure specifics (type, size, weight and colors). “It is kind of neat to see how colors dominate for three or four years and then they kind of fade away, and then I find that color comes back strong after two or three years,” says Maloney.
Towards the end of his entries Maloney also records notes on any special retrieves he employed to catch keepers, how he caught non-keeper fish and where he failed to catch fish. The veteran club angler also records the same details if he blanks on his fishing trip. His notes for tournaments differ slightly from his other journal entries. Maloney starts his entry with the name of the tournament he fished, when the tournament started and finished, his total weight and placement in the standings, the winner’s weight and the weight of the tournament’s big bass. Keeping these tournament statistics allows him to pull up this information in the future to determine how much weight he will need to do well in the same tournament. Then he can set up his practices to target the right size fish to win the event.
Chapman’s File Cabinet
During his club years and throughout his early days of fishing regional tournaments, Brent Chapman stuffed information about Midwest lakes into accordion-style folders and stored the folders in a file cabinet. Whenever he found a magazine article about a particular lake, he would clip out the article and place it in a folder. Each lake folder also included a map of the lake and tournament results Chapman clipped out of the Kansas City Star newspaper.
“Whenever we would go back to a particular body of water or somewhere new, then I at least had some information on hand,” recalls Chapman. “Any of that stuff can be helpful, such as just letting a guy know what kind of weight it is going to take to win fishing Truman (Lake) in July versus Truman in April.”
The touring pro now has an elaborate filing system containing all the lakes and rivers he has fished throughout the country. Chapman admits that a lot of information can be pulled from the Internet and logged into a computer, but he still prefers to store his details the old-fashioned way. “There is nothing like having something you can put in the palm of your hand and read and scribble on,” he says.
The tournament results Chapman files now include his notes on where he finished, and what he did to catch his fish. He also notes information he has heard from other anglers who fished the same event. “A lot of guys will divulge stuff after the tournament,” Chapman says. “A lot of it may or may not be valuable but it is all stuff that helps me later on.”
Chapman suggests club anglers can keep a variety of information in their filing system besides the basics of water temperature, water clarity, water levels and weather conditions. He believes keeping track of the fishing pressure on the date and location fished could also be helpful information. “The biggest thing is keeping records that work for you, whether they are consistent or not,” says Chapman, who also recommends writing notes legibly so you can decipher your entries later.
Fishing journals can help point club anglers in the right direction for their next tournament. Then it is up to them to apply that valuable information into a winning pattern.
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Best times For Note-Taking
Brent Chapman knows bass club anglers would rather spend their weekends on the water rather than putting together an elaborate information filing system. However he suggests anglers should take about 30 minutes a couple of times a week to build up good information for a journal or file system.
The Kansas pro advises bass club anglers to jot down notes while the details are still fresh in their minds, such as the Sunday night after the tournament. They can also use a tape recorder for collecting their thoughts on the drive home from a tournament.
Brian Maloney also believes in immediacy when recording entries in a journal. “You are probably hurting yourself if you are waiting 72 hours or a week because there will be little things that you just flat forget,” he warns. “Taking 15 or 20 minutes of your time (writing in a journal) after you just spent eight hours on the water is valuable.”
When fishing multiple-day tournaments, Maloney sets aside some time for taking notes at the end of the day. After getting his equipment ready for the next day, Maloney makes his journal entry and goes back through the notes of his practice days to see if he forgot to apply anything he discovered in practice.
Photo captions
BCDJournal—Sample page from Brian Maloney’s fishing journal.
DSC0001, 0004, 0005—Keeping a journal helps Brian Maloney determine which patterns to try throughout the year.
DSC 0038, 0048, 0064, and 0066—Weather and water conditions are key elements anglers should record in their fishing journals.
DSC 0089, 0090, 0095 and 0096—Consulting his fishing journal aids Brian Maloney when he needs to find out how he previously caught bass in inclement weather.
DSC 0822, 0823, 0827, 0829 and 0833—Brian Maloney keeps track of the same information every time he jots down notes in his journal.
DSC1153—Touring pro Brent Chapman has kept file cabinets full of notes and tournament results on various lakes ever since his bass club days.
DSC1156, 1157, 1159 and 1161—Recording tournament results in his filing system provides valuable information for Brent Chapman when he has to fish the same body of water again.
