You can develop a fishing journal for trout, bass, catfish, or panfish easily and without a lot of past experience. The basic idea behind a fishing journal is to record past fishing experiences in order to develop a pattern. The downfall of this for many fisherman just starting a journal is that they don’t have a lot of experience, at least recorded experiences. This can discourage the start of a journal. However, there is a simple remedy to get a fishing journal started without having much or any fishing experience.
State Conservation Departments, or in some states the Department of Natural Resources, provide periodic updates called fishing reports. Often these can be viewed online or received as an email. The value of these reports is that they provide basic information that is commonly recorded in personal fishing journals. This information can include moon phases, weather, water levels, water clarity and quality, water temperature, and the quality of fishing for specific species as well as successful lures and baits. Examining this information over a period of time can reveal patterns for fish in a more consistent manner than your personal journal. After all, unless your extremely lucky, and extremely fast, your not able to fish all of the rivers and lakes in your state every week.
This approach does have its weaknesses as you are limited to the weather and water events that the state decides to record and publish. For instance, I receive the Missouri Department of Conservation weekly fishing report email, and it does not include the moon phase. But, this can easily be overcome by simply comparing the moon phase published by other resources such as your local newpaper or a farmer’s almanac.
You can also merely use the fishing reports to supplement your own fishing experiences. This allows you to include additional notes in your journal. For instance, you can compare what fish were biting on in nearby fisheries with what was working for you. The benefit of this can be reassurance that the success of your lure choice was not mere coincidence or it can reveal what other lure might work under similar circumstances.
Using fishing reports as your journal or to supplement your own experiences is made easier if the conservation department’s website contains a archive of past reports. If it doesn’t, you’ll have to start saving your email fishing reports to get enough to recognize a pattern.
This one of the easiest ways for a beginning fisherman or for an angler that simply can’t fish as much as they would like to get enough information to develop a fishing journal that reveal important patterns of fish behavior in relation to weather, moon phases, and water conditions.
To record information you can simply use a tablet or a computer document, but many fishing specific journals are available that have templates for fishing relevant information. The list below provides a few examples. Some are for fishing in general, while other journals are designed specifically for a type of fish, such as trout, or for a type of fishing, such as flyfishing.