Whether the moon has an effect on fishing success is a matter of much debate among fishermen. There are those who swear by it, and there are those that chalk it up to superstition.
Last night, I saw a news story on TV in which a fisheries biologist strongly suggested that you fish during an eclipse. This immediately reminded me about an experience I had during the eclipse on Saturday, March 7, 1970. I was ice fishing on the pond at my local rod and gun club.
I had no flags for the first two hours. Then as the eclipse started, the flags started popping up. Soon all five of my tip ups flagged at the same time. I didn’t know which way to turn. It was impossible to handle all five tip ups effectively at the same time. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, much to the amusement of the Saturday crowd sitting at the rod and gun club bar watching me fish through the windows.
Through all the chaos, I did manage to land a couple of trout, but as soon as the eclipse passed, so did the fishing. Another hour passed without a single flag. At that point, I considered myself lucky, and I called it a day.
Another experience I had was later in the 1970s when my friend Paul, his wife Dawn, and I fished a reservoir that was closed to fishing. We snuck in an aluminum canoe after sunset, and we fished all night.
At first, it was a clear, moonlit night, and we didn’t catch a thing. Dawn curled up in the bottom of the canoe and went to sleep until some patchy clouds rolled in and we started catching fish. Every time a cloud covered the moon, we’d hook up. When the clouds dispersed, the fishing shut down. This happened again and again. It was very dark when the moon was behind the clouds. We were blind casting.
As usual, I brought the bulk of the fishing tackle, including some surface lures, but mostly rubber worms. The surface lures worked occasionally, but the rubber worms worked on every cast that we took when there was cloud cover. We mostly caught largemouth bass, and big ones at that. They averaged 18 inches and 2 to 3 pounds. We were even catching good-sized pickerel on plastic worms!
Catching that many fish, especially pickerel, quickly puts a dent in your rubber worm inventory. When I started to run out of tackle, we started to make our way across the reservoir back towards our car, but it was slow going because we couldn’t stop catching fish.
As daybreak approached, we knew that we really needed to get off the reservoir before anyone spotted us. As we continued our way towards the road where we were parked, we couldn’t keep the fish off our lines. During that stretch, we caught a fish on every cast.
As soon as the sun made its way above the trees, the fishing shut off completely. Now we had a problem. We were in the middle of the reservoir that was closed to fishing, it was daylight, and we had to make our way to our car, which was parked on a very busy road.
Somehow we made it without anyone notifying the authorities. We caught more than 30 fish, making for a very memorable night.
One more experience I’ve had in favor of the moon debate is fishing for striped bass on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. There were many nights where I couldn’t buy a fish while the moon was shining, but as soon as a cloud covered the moon, I’d get a hit. On those nights when the clouds are moving fast, you could see the rises start up when the moon was cloud covered, and then it would all go quiet when the clouds moved on.
As a final piece of evidence on the pro-moon side, I present my late, great friend Dickie. He was one of those who swore by the moon’s effect on fishing. He would troll in the dark for smallmouth bass from sundown to sunup. He preferred fishing during a new moon. He liked to refer to the moon as “he,” and he would often say, “The best time to fish is when he is directly overhead or directly underfoot.”
My son Tony and grandson Ian once did this type of fishing with Dickie, and Ian caught the largest smallmouth of his life that night.
Given how much success Dickie had on those nighttime outings and how much success I’ve had “playing the moon,” I’m inclined to take his side in the great moon debate.
WLAGS
WLAGS 