Moon phases
EVERY FISHERMAN KNOWS that the best fishing is when the fish are feeding. This tends to be at dawn and dusk, but two other periods in the day often go unnoticed: moonrise and moonset.
These periods, combined with the moon’s phase, trigger feeding, so choosing times when sunrise/sunset and moonrise/ moonset coincide with the new or full moon will improve your fishing success. A complete lunar cycle is usually referred to in four stages: 1. Full moon 2. Last quarter or waning moon 3. New moon or the dark of the moon 4. First quarter or waxing moon This cycle rotates every 29 days approximately. The key to getting a handle on solar/lunar influences comes down to knowing exactly when the sun and moon rise and set on a 24hour basis. There’s evidence that fish are active during a 90-minute window surrounding each of these four daily influences, which also form the basis for bite times, although how these are calculated is less straight forward.
Dawn and dusk correlate with sunrise and sunset. Moonrise and moonset are a bit more tricky to observe since they can occur at any time during the day or night. Overcast weather makes it impossible to see the moon rise or set, and of course a dark/new moon is not visible to begin with. However solunar/lunar tables giving the exact times of sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset are readily available in printed form or online.
The best catches often come during the peak moon phases of full and new moon. Although it varies between fish species – some are easier to catch on a dark moon, others on a full moon – a three to five-day stretch after the full or new (dark) moon peak can provide exceptionally good fishing.
Pulling it all together, you want to plan fishing trips for the days just after the full or new moon and then be on your favourite big fish spots during the daily rise and set of the sun and the moon.
Maori Fishing Calendar says the fishing is bad, nor do I take too much notice of bite times, although I have to agree that fish come on the bite at certain times every day – whether these are the same as the published bite times I have rarely bothered to check. For me, weather, location and tide are more important to fishing success than ‘good’ or ‘bad’ fishing days and specific bite times.
That said, fishing calendars can be a handy tool and many anglers religiously plan fishing forays around the bite times. When it works with the time I have available to go fishing, so do I.
But even without a calendar you can calculate feeding periods by simply checking moonrise and moonset in the weather section of newspapers, newspaper websites and online weather sources. The prime bite period when the moon is directly overhead is the halfway point between moonrise and moonset. The minor period will be 12 hours later when the moon is underfoot on the other side of the planet. These times advance by about an hour each day, so you can roughly calculate them in advance.
What you don’t get working it out this way is the duration of the bite time but at least you know what time of day fishing should be at its best. I probably take more notice of this general guide than I do of specific bite times, which may be as short as a few minutes. B
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