Wednesday and Thursday – you must go fishing!
 

Realizing that this Wednesday is the dreaded full moon, I still think that Wednesday night and especially Thursday night will be the nights to catch lots of large striped bass.

When it comes to fishing I usually hate the full moon because most of the time the fishing sucks. I’ve asked dozens of charter captains from around the world what they though about fishing during a full moon and they’re close to unanimous in their opinion that it’s a terrible time to fish. So why am I so psyched to get a line in the water on Wednesday or Thursday night? First of all, most charter captains fish during the day and not at night; secondly, they feel that the fishing is off during the day because the fish feed heavily at night. I don’t necessarily feel that the fish feed all night long, but I do believe that at certain stages of the moon and tide they do feed heavily.

This Wednesday brings on an especially significant full moon, one that is at perigee. The moon will appear to be very large because it will be 30,000 km closer to the earth than it was in February. Therefore the full moon effects will be even more significant, both good and bad. On the positive side, areas that light up during high tide will be flooded with even more water to draw stripers onto the shoreline. On the negative side, there is often a lot of grass pulled into the water by the higher tides which makes fishing certain plugs more difficult.

On Thursday night the tides will be high in the Newport area around the time of sunset – another factor that should contributes to a heavy bite at dusk. The way I see it, the fishing should be dynamite just before and after sunset. Then it will be time to grab a bite to eat, catch a cat nap and then move to another area in time for the hottest bite of the morning, just as the moon goes into transition at 1:06 a.m. If there is anything to the solunar calendar and when maximum feeding should occur, it will be from just before 1:00 till around 3:30 a.m. – with a low tide at 2:09.

There are two other significant things that should be triggered by this particular full moon – the start of the mullet run and the beginning of the striped bass migration.

I’ll be teaming up on Thursday night with DJ Muller, a talented surf fisherman and writer, and hopefully Steve McKenna and the infamous #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&. It will be interesting to film these guys as they work Slug-Gos, wooden lures and of course eels. Last time we got together Steve produced a 40 pound fish…who knows what will happen this time…if we get skunked we can always blame it on the moon.

The only reason I feel Thursday (the day after the full moon) will be the better day/night is because the weather forecast calls for rain on Wednesday and that could pull even more weeds into the water.

Hopefully these are good enough reasons to get some of you folks out there fishing.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how the moon has impacted your past fishing trips.

I would also be interested in seeing some follow up posts by anglers that fish Wednesday night through Friday morning.

Finally, you can print this out and hand it to your wife, boss, or significant other and say, “I have to go fishing, it says so right here.”

Great post Mr. L :cputin: :claps:

Message received...

-spence

Does a 50 on chunk make u talented?

For you? No...

-spence

Be Nice...
I know where u fish.
I will go there an vacum all the bass out of it.

If you so it sounds like Wed and Thurs would be the time :hee:

-spence

raven called that one back in febuary..:btu:


http://www.striped-bass.com/Stripert...lunar+calender

agreed......
 

the moon is in the sign of pisces on wednesday and thursday...
( or you could say ...the planetary alignment is pissah)
which is why i said: it was a great time to fish ... back in early spring.
so theres another reason...to go
thanks for the back up...Fish Eye ..... your right on target. :btu:

oops fishin freak beat me to it lol)

Can't tell ya why but i been a fan of the astrolgical thing for yrs.
As many as 35 yrs ago some publiction.Maybe F&S used to print em with the fish next to em on the good days..Then i woulf read doug hannon's charts.I would note when i got my better fish an it was ususlly near the pinpointed times.(they used to post best times of day).The last 2 yrs i printed out Ravens page an I can take my notes an show ya the dates I got my best fish.
Some might be surprised some might not....
Sure there are alot of other factors that come into play in the surf for the situation to work in ur favor.And i don't use the Astrological chart to plan trips or anything like that.Like most folks I go when i can.It does help to keep my little mind occupied, with good thoughts of big fish.Which fires me up which helps me to go fishing.At times when I feel lazy...

I am in for Thursday Mike....

Raven,

I hadn't seen your earlier post. Good stuff!

Obviously, you've been in tune with the importance of the lunar cycles as it applies to fishing for some time now.

You mentioned that you use more refined measurements than other charts or calendars. What are some of the key factors you add to the equation?

What will you be doing during this year’s Corn Moon?

Back in 1974 I started pegging the days I wanted to be in the water at sunrise or sunset; in those days I wanted to intercept striped bass with a spear gun. The only tools I used back then were the Eldridge Tide chart and a chart showing times of sunrise and sunset. I would make it a point to be in the water at false dawn or close to dusk whenever that coincided with a high tide (best visibility and slack tide at the change) in Newport.

I really hope a few anglers from this site will put this theory to the test and report back on what they experienced.

Put me down for all week please

That sheet is going up on my wall.
Did you put it together from your personal logs or get Madame LinezZiderr the fishermans astrologist to write it up?

Raven's calendar, don't leave home without it. :doh: :)

Oh it's going to be put to the test alright. The fishing is going to need to turn around 180 degrees in the next couple of days to make this theory happen.

The only fish from shore I know of in Newport is Tattoos maybe keeper size bass this AM and mine last night. I don't know of any quality or quantity being taken from the shores of Newport in the past week. Maybe DZ will take one tonight, I saw his truck parked out there.

We are for the most part baitless. I hope that moon works it's mojo and brings us some bunker.:hee: Newport is infamous for turning on like a lightswitch, so it certainly could still happen.

Pete / Like ya said no fish around ///yet Commercial season opened in RI this past Friday & is Closing on this Wednesday======= & we had horrible weather for at least 3 of the six days ?????????????

go figure ????:faga:

I just got the boat fixed!! Wife home from the hosiptal, I am fishing Thursday for the first time all season!!!

I hope you are all right!

:jump:
it's GO time..

Fish Eye :
the astro calender is one i reproduced ...after reading about
the water sign days.... for the whole year... which is "when" the planets line up
at a certain angle...that they place our moon in that constellation's influence.....

which is what we all refer to as an Astrological Sign.... and in this case the astrological signs are divided into four groups: water ,air, fire, and earth..... water signs being the best.... some earth signs too...TAURUS for example....
whereas the air and fire signs are generally not that good and are considered barren days.

i have tested this method for several decades and found that it worked....even doing double blind studies like scientists do.... where you have the unknowns revealed after the fact...to see if it worked... proving it to myself over and over and over....

the ancients.....discovered this technology more than 2000 years ago...erecting stone alignment monitoring tools like stonehenge.
today we use computers....to acomplish the same thing

all i did was ......to make it available.... to the board .

it's a system i most definately believe in....:uhuh:
the other almanacs don't use this method to predict their best days...and if you compare them side by side the dates wont match up for the most part.

as MAC likes to say (quote) you go when you can go!.... and he's quite right! as thats the truth.... but, if you also know that it's predicted to be a "good" fishin day... that gives you that extra batch of confidence.
cheers ! and tight lines to all :cheers:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
it's eleven O'clock and all is well.)))))))))

the sound of the town crier fading off in the distance http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/l0/sleeping.gif

the mullet are already starting to run. not in huge numbers but they were in the wash in two areas far apart from one another last night and this morning. from 10-1 i was getting teen size fish on needles burned across the surface. i had hits on almost every cast and lost two nice fish that hit right at my feet. the whole time i was wishing i had eels. after the bite died i took a ride and found more of the same from 3-6 am except smaller bass and monster blues, who were puking up some BIG mullet.

Bart,

Thanks for the great news. Was the water still dirty from the storm or has it cleared up a bit?

Send me a PM, I'm interested in getting some shots of the mullet under the surf.

Thanks again.

I picked up my biggest of the year...
 

On one of Ravens Red dot days...

Any reports from last night(Wed)? Try my luck tonight.

:sleeps:

Small and Slow under the spotlight...
never needed a light last night... needed cloud cover BAD

We found decent agressive fish...
 

too bad the blues were there too. Dropped a real nice drag peeler though. Only managed 3-4 keepers between us. But I KNOW there were allot of bass around us. Just too many blues also.

All in all a decent night though. Brought home 2 mid teens and shadow got some meat also.

Didnt get a chance to try. My gear is in the truck but I crunched the fender on the way to work so wasnt in mood to go fishing lastnight.:topic::bc::hs::bc::topic:

anyone have a reliable 4x4 truck/jeep - something with an open bed or matching trailer for realll small money?
:sled:

Full moon :hs: I dont even bother unless its raining, waste of gas

Loaded up four people and a lot of eels in the boat and went out into the sunlight and fished from 8pm to 12:30am. The fish clearly aren't near shore around here, maybe they'd be deep...

Precision bombed deep structure with 3 wayed eels, at least 3 eels in the water anytime we were on structure. Finally found a single fish around 19 pounds around midnight. We have a lot of leftover eels, even the bluefish were scarce...

I don't like the full moon at all, even with cloud cover. Not that you can't catch under a full moon, just that the odds against you are increased signicantly.

Reality is the real problem right now is a lot of areas don't have any bait and that's why the fishing is horrible, much more so then the moon.

One (just) keeper and two small for under four hours. Did Sand beaches and there was bait. Very small blobs of mullet. Water wasn't very clear and no predicted clouds. A couple of casts, a couple of smokes, a couple of fish.