Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating - How do you record the data from you trips?

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How do you record the data from you trips?

Just wondering how you keep a record of your outings (tide, time of day, wind, location, fish caught, etc...)

Journal format? Did you create an excel sheet? Do you purchase and existing template?

I'm looking to improve my method.

Thanks

This coming year..Gonna do it with Sandmans new calender..

In the past I used to make a standard form and runoff lots of copies of it and put them in small three-ring binders. Now I just do it free form and put it in a journal.

I am typing entries in to a Personal Brain program. It can't sort data or pick out trends, but allows me to compare days to eachother and to make links between patterns.

I was going full out on figuring out how to transfer my logbooks into a full electronic format, like a fully searchable database, but lost momentum on it for the moment. Plenty of people swear by the excel sheet, while there are also some commercial programs that you can test out, i don't know if I can give the name here, but if you PM me I can give you the link so you can test out entering your data in their database and see how they crunch the results.

Otherwise, there is a whole thread on logbooks on the "other" striper website that might be a big help to you in your research.

I write it into a small calendar like the ones JohnR gives out at TFCTFN, works mint for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gadabout (Post 461915)

In the past I used to make a standard form and runoff lots of copies of it and put them in small three-ring binders. Now I just do it free form and put it in a journal.

I did pretty much the same. I've since converted it to electronic format using a simple database program that synchs to my palm. I have the palm with me for other reasons, so synching to the log is a plus. The nice thing about having it on my computer is that it's easy to type into it and weather/tide info is only a few mouse clicks away - even days or weeks later.

Simple is key for me, otherwise I'd never fill it out. I have 4 fields:
Date
Fish (species)
Detail (I note specifics like, who, where, tide, moon)
Comment (general notes of the day)

An example of a comment section:

Quote:

Good day. Almost no wind, sunny, albies spotty but catchable in good numbers by blind casting areas that seemed fishy. Early, saw bait spray on the beach and Jim got one. At around 2 there was lots of activity a little NE of the lighthouse. All fish caught on the east side. Maybe 10-15 fish caught. Lost half an albie to a thresher shark - Matty saw the shark just before he lost an albie to it.

Albies were on big 5-6" silversides and maybe small bluefish. Jim did well on a blue swimmer. I caught one on a blue yozuri mag minnow and on full tutti fruity jig flies fished deep. Also caught some on a sparse tutti fruity. Small bluefish were a PITA by tearing up the flies.