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Q: I'm not sure how I'm going to keep track of all the details of my fishing trips. There are a lot of new terms I haven't used before and sometimes my trips are over a period of several days, sometimes as long as a week.
A:
Please don't try to remember all these details, because chances are you won't. Write everything down immediately! The details are just too important to allow time to cloud your memory. You can print out this form -
FindTheBass.com Fishing Log (pdf)
and keep it with you or use whatever method works for you, but write it down. I don't even wait until I get back to shore, home or the motel room. I keep these forms with me all the time and make notes as the day progresses. This way I'm sure all the data is accurate.
Q: Why should I enter my fishing results before there is enough information in the data base to help me?
A:
It's the old "chicken or the egg" question. If everyone waits for someone else to enter information, there will never be any results compiled and this tool will never realize its true potential. But let's say you don't care about the big picture and you want to know what this can do for you today. Because this data base provides you the ability to search and store the information you personally enter, you have the best data base program available on the web to store and organize the patterns you have unveiled. By getting in the habit of noting the lake conditions, where exactly you were fishing and what you did to catch your fish, it will make you a better angler. Patterns that you may not have noticed initially will be displayed in graphic form and will suddenly become crystal clear.
Q: I went fishing yesterday and I caught some fish in the morning on top water lures and then caught them on jigs in the afternoon. How should I enter this information?
A:
If the weights and amount of fish caught were even with both patterns, then use two separate entries. If the morning pattern produced only one or two fish or small fish that were later culled by the afternoon's catch, then only enter the most productive pattern. What you want is a record of the day's most productive location and method.
Q: If I give the locations and lures I used to catch my fish, won't everyone be able to go to my spots and fish them out?
A:
That's a great question. That's exactly what everyone thinks at first, but let me ask you this. Have you ever been fishing a particular spot and doing really well and then another boat starts to move in on you? I'll bet that in most cases, they never quite key in on what you are doing and soon move off to find "greener pastures". Now in this example, they were there the same day and even had the opportunity to watch you and they still couldn't catch them as well as you had been. It's the subtle details that make the difference. By entering your results in this data base, you aren't pinpointing exactly which point in the 2L section of the lake you were fishing, much less that you were targeting isolated cover and had to cast to the shady side to trigger a strike. All that information will be kept in the note section that you and you alone have access to. This data base will help eliminate a vast amount of water, but it still takes the right techniques and attention to detail to become a great bass angler.
Q: Everyone will divide a lake a little differently. What if they catch fish in what they call the 3L section of the lake and I called that section 2L?
A:
Another great question. Once again, the purpose of this data base isn't to direct you to the exact GPS coordinates of the hot spot, it's to help you recognize and establish productive patterns. If I'm headed to a lake and see that for the expected weather conditions and water temperatures, points with ledges in 15 feet of water in the 1L section of the lake are where I should focus, I'm also going to be checking my lake map to see if any similar points exist in the lower 2L sections. If I spot a juicy looking ledge on the map and it's little farther up the lake than what I'm calling 1L, don't think for a second I'm not going to check it out. I would suggest you do the same!
Q: Can I enter the tournament results from the big National Tournaments I watch on TV or read about in the magazines?
A:
As good an idea as this seems initially, there are some problems that may develop. First, unless you are there in the boat, you can only assume that what you're reading or watching is accurate. There may have been some generalizations made in the coverage of the tournament that will skew the information entered into the data base. Secondly, if 50 people decide to enter the data from that big tournament, all of a sudden that particular pattern will be overwhelmingly dominant in the data base searches. For those reasons, please enter only the information from your fishing excursions. Hopefully in the very near future, some of the pros we watch on Saturday mornings will be entering their information themselves!