fishing jounral

hey guys i have looked all over the board and haven't found much info on fishing journals. i am hoping to start a new tradition of recording all of my fishing adventures. I have looked on amazon and there are a couple decent journals but i figured I'd see what other guys do. so, do you have a favorite journal that you purchase? do you make your own? what info have you found helpful (ie h2o temp, barometer, weather, tackle, cfm). as for now, I just fish when I can, so I don't pay attention to this, so is it worth the extra journal time to gather this info? do you do pics? it seems like everyone has an iphone these days so pics shouldn't be hard to get. is there any other considerations that you have or critiques of commercial journals that would help a newbie? thanks in advance for the advice, i look forward to seeing what other guys do.

I never kept one....wish that I did, though.

These days I would probably carry a scratch pad and then enter that day's data into custom (by me) spreadsheet form using Excel or similar when I got home.
And back it up, of course.

Instrument shops that carry surveyor's supplies have nice, all-weather note pads.

I use to keep track of that. But now I'm at a point in life where I catch a lot of fish, far more than most. So now instead of detailed notes in a journal of every day fishing. I just keep track of exceptionally good days AND bad days. No more in between
After years of keeping logs about fishing I'm pretty good at just keep a memory logged of evey day and the conditions on a regular basis.

The KeY to a Gud Jurnal is propur Speling and punctation and use of Capitolizacion,

I started one but Ive been too busy fishing to update it.

In all my years fishing, I think ive only documented a couple pages of notes. Keep telling myself to get a journal and write down every trip, if for no other reason to look back on and remind myself how bad the fishing is getting...

For the beginner it can speed up the process of water height/clarity and color/size recognition for those conditions.

I second the Excell spreadsheet, you can customize it to your needs.. Date, River Locale, water height/temp, lure used, fish caught, etc...

Excel to create and then record.

I have a 1 pager if you want. Circle most stuff cuz it's already listed.

I gave up on keeping one.

especially now, not worth it based on less and less steelhead being offered to the license holder.

The value of the journal increases with time.

As one gets older, the ability to remember details starts to fade, and trips of days gone by just begin to blend together.

There is also the sentimental factor of being able to look many years back on past successes ( and failures) and who was there with you to share them. It helps you to appreciate the good times you had along the way, esp during long winters.

This is a great answer ^^^

I try to put every trip, bite and landed. Been doing it since the early 80's.

I just use a calendar and have a big pile of them hidden!

fp

Personally, I just go fishing. The memorable days I never lose in my head and to be honest they are marked on a calendar, but not in any detail as to weather, temp, etc. Besides, the weather, water levels, etc., are so inconsistent from year to year, as are the runs, it seems kind of useless to count on the same results from one time period to the same time period the following year.

Not saying there isn't any value to keeping a journal, just not for me.

When I was a kid I made one, had categories for all kinds of things that I was excited to keep track of...and then never put anything in it, not once.

Still haven't.

Fish on...

Todd

That's a good idea.
The equipment rental yards usually have big, free calenders for us construction types.
Plenty of room to make notes for each day....and did I mention, free ?

Check United or Sunbelt.
My favorite is Star but they're a Portland company.


Tech Tip:
If you ask real nice they might give you a 12" job office wall clock.

I never had the discipline. Instead, I really enjoy reading the signs from weather, tide, a coarse level personal knowledge of run timing by location and variability in response to conditions, , etc. and making a decision to go fishing or not. Then on the water it happens at a finer scale, what gear to use, which hole to fish, when to move. Reading the water. Watching the birds. In short, I enjoy observing the circumstances and responding to them more than relying on a history of what happened before. The accumulated knowledge is in my head.

Now days, a lot of people look at the internet and see what happened yesterday to make thier decisions. Probably better than a journal if you dont yet have the instincts developed on how everything combines to influence fishing success. But I know a lot of people who make good use of a journal, so if you think it will help go for it.

+1


I wised up and started keeping one back in 93'. Every trip since, where I have a fish encountered gets recorded. This includes bites, rolled fish, hooked & lost and landed. Skunk trips do not get recorded.

I've done it for so long now that at the end of the day it's just automatic to sit down and record what happened for the day-not a hassle at all. Now that I have a 100+ pages of data, it is INVALUABLE for seeing trends and run timings under different conditions on different waters.

I just use a small-size 6" x 8" 3-ring binder with heavy stock lined paper like you'd see surveyors or foresters use. It holds up better over time. Pretty simple.

I used to keep one for all my saltwater beach fishing.
I then forget to note it or be to tired when I got home to do so.
Once you start getting the beaches dialed in regarding tides, it get pretty easy to determine what tides will produce and which will be a bust.

I do agree with Doc on the sentiment value. My best friend and I have fished together for over 40 years and have had many great times. We both bring up things now that one of use remembers and the other one can't recall.
SF

I have been keeping a journal since 2000, I use the "Fishing Journal, Angling Legacy". By Frank Amoto publication, I document all river trips. The flow at start, finish, temp, clarity, the holes we hooked fish, the offering, hooked, landed, wild, hatchery, and partners fished with. It is a great resource

Tried to do it once then realized it felt too much like work (data analysis, tracking, tallying, spreadsheets, etc.). I go fishing to forget about work.

I'm pretty much like Nor Cal Drifter. Too much work...too little memory. But I have chronicled every fish my son and I have caught (we are lifelong fishin' and huntin' buddies) over the past 15 years with photo's. We photo every fish and I have an entire wall of my den covered with them. And much to my surprise, especially at my age, I can still remember the vivid details of every trip. As I've told people who are amazed at my wall..."There's a story behind every picture". Works for me.

The pics and the journal go hand in hand. Sometimes I get negligent with the journal and have to use the pics as a reference weeks or months later.

Would love to read some journals from some of the pioneers. Would any of you have a $ value on them. I think some of them would be priceless.

I kept tide charts, rain amounts, moon cycles, gauge height, barometric pressure, and all encounters with anything swimming, or walking, that wasn't human. For like 3 years. it got me dialed in on what days to expect a fish and what days to expect a hike.
It amazed me the number of deer and elk sightings, that I caught fish around... and I was able to dial in a few lower holes on some small rivers that I could go "x" amount of time from low tide early in the season and encounter fish that came in with the tide. I also found that if the animals were up late the fish seemed to eat at night also, so the best bites were later in the am after they got hungry again.

I stopped keeping track after I started noticing that more people on the river or bay reduced the number of fish I caught. it made me want to only fish midweek. and the Job didn't like that....

My dad started keeping a journal around 1990 on a calendar. It was basic, keeping stats on water flows, color, techniques used, etc. Starting around 1996 he started a journal on the computer and it reads as a true fish story. It has reports written by me starting around the age 11 and is priceless as far as I'm concerned. All told I believe he's over a 1,000 pages and it chronicles not only us but our fishing network out here on the OP. As a result, patterns have emerged for both fresh and saltwater. Sooner or later he's going to turn the document into an actual bound book.

It might be nerdy, but they are usefull, and like doc I have pictures,

Doc, when I look back over the last ten years, on 2/8 when I saw you last year, give or take a day on either side. Last year I was 8 for 13. And the ten year average for that water, during the three day window, similar flows is 9 for 12 with the low point being 6 landed, So I know where I will be this year.

Your point is?

I used to keep a journal back in the day. Salmon Trout Steelheader had an excellent journal they used to sell. Don't use it anymore, but do look at it every once in awhile to remember the good old days.

If you're tech savvy, create a free blog on Tumblr, Blogspot, Wordpress and make it "private" so that only you can login and view it. That way you can upload pics as well as jot down important info. Info & pics at the same place.

Think of it as a more professional approach to the sport.
I wish that I had done it.


One of the great, traditional fisheries down here is trolling for Spring Chinook on the Willamette.
I knew a guy who had a Springer journal that dated back to the late 40's.
His favorite section was the Oak Grove Reach.
This "paperwork" is now a historical document, IMO.

What are skunk days?

Might have a few skunk days in the pile.

Na, no way!
fp

Somebody has a Fishing Journal App. for your smart phone... Just gotta find it.

+1 for the online blogs. Easy free and you don't have to worry about losing it. I've kept a log starting in 1995 with the hopes of one day maybe writing a book. Not gonna happen until my kids are out of the house because I'm too busy fishing or taking care of them.

I also used it as practice for coding HTML. What PITA but it was fun to look back at our adventures. www.alaskafishinglogs.com

Now I use the blog system. Unlike the technical detail blogs mine are more stories. But with the ability to upload pictures and video the conditions can be memorialized. I have no idea if it's the best one but I use the google combo of blogspot, Picasa, and YouTube and it's pretty easy. It does take time but I personally think it's worth it.
http://guidesak.blogspot.com

Its a really good idea if you are not too busy to do it. When I was younger (aka during college, and before kids) I kept up a really good log.

I just got a daily planner, and filled out what happened on each day, flows, weather, technique or anything else I thought was important. Even more, I filled it out if my network had success and I used the internet to verify flows, weather, etc to figure out what was happening.

I superimposed the net-days over all of that as well. Sometimes I looked on the internet and would write down information I gleaned from it, when people who fish the same places I do would post reports.

Then in the margins I would write down hypotheses, and opinions on what was happening with the fish. I would write anything I thought would give me an edge if the same conditions presented themselves. Sometimes I pasted pictures of the color of certain rivers in there as well. I would just stop by on my way by and take a picture of the water for future reference. This started when we still took pictures with film.

How much would someone pay for that? It basically covers about 5 rivers within an hour of me here, you can all probably guess them.

Eventually, I got to where I knew what was going on enough that I didn't have to do it so I quit. Now I just go back through the pictures on my phone, I really should send all the texts from my fish network to the cloud somewhere to remember that as well.

See you on the river 2/8 MetlheadMatt!

It also makes me wistful whenever I read it. Because for a couple of years I filled out 3-5 days a week!

I don't record in journals the fish I caught...I don't take pictures of the fish I caught...

I suck. I like to just go out and fish. The lasting memories stick. The others don't . I figure, fish for the moment and let the moment go.

I don't have a journal but I just go fishing with Rocket Red which is basically the same thing.

I used to keep one so I wouldn't forget the details from previous years but I kept forgetting to use it!

Read The Western Angler by Roderick Haig-Brown. It kind of reads like a journal - of a master angler, fishing Vancouver Island before the runs crashed.

I keep a log in Word. The best thing about it, besides being archival, is the search function. If I want to remember where a certain hole is, what river level I caught those fish at, which color worked that one time, etc, all I need to do is search a couple key words and it's there!

It's also a hoot to read about trips you've forgotten about...........

It may not tell where to catch a single fish, it will tell me where I have had success at certain flows, and what rivers to look at at certain time periods, The river I chose today, knowing the flows, I targeted certain areas, And we pounded them, in areas and only a few else considered. Another 200cfs lower and they will not hold there. This is where the journal comes in handy.

lol... Think I'll start taking notes and 50 yrs from now when all our rivers are finally shut down I can title my new book " The diaries of a fishing nerd who fished with training wheels, bent metal, and never got paid or laid"

Opinions are like A55holes, everybody's got one. If you like to go over notes from years past, good for you -- If you disdain that process, fine. Different strokes for different folks! Me, I like to keep a record of fish caught, size, time of tide, depth etc, and the Puget Sound Tidelog is a nice place to keep the notes. Why trash someone who doesn't think like you???