Fishing Philosophy |
|
 |
Email to a friend
|
Bite Times
Many anglers put a great deal of faith in the moon phase in relation to the bite time. Maori have traditionally fished and planted crops according to the moon.
One of the great-unsolved mysteries of fishing is: when do fish bite? My short answer is, “I haven’t got a clue.”
I probably knew many decades ago (if only I could remember that far back), a hunch that’s based on an advert by an Auckland butcher advertising for an apprentice. The ad stipulated that the successful applicant must be less than 18 years of age. When asked why under 18, he answered: “Because I want to get him while he still knows everything.”
Luckily I also have a long answer based on hunches, assumptions, postulations, suppositions, notions, ideas, theories and a few memory flashbacks to when I was 18.
Fish ‘bite’ for a number of reasons, including from aggression, curiosity, dominance, hunger and, more simply, because they haven’t got hands.
Of particular interest to us fishers is their need to eat. Because the timing of the latter is so discretionary, the ‘when’ has given rise to many explanations, some of which have taken on a distinctly astrophysical flavour.
The moon
First and foremost among these is the influence of the moon. Moonrise and moonset, as well as full and new moons, are all said to bring fish on the bite. You can also add mid-moon (when the moon is directly overhead or directly underfoot) as another good time to be fishing. Why this stellar body is so relevant to fish beyond the effect it has on tides, I have not been able to fathom. I have not noticed that cows – or for that matter, humans – feed more actively during those above-mentioned lunar periods. (Note to self: find out if there is a connection between moon phases, the frequency of McDonald TV ads and the number of Teletubbies entering the Double Arches.)
The sun
I only mention the sun because the best sun times are at sunset and sunrise, when it is still relatively dark. Between these two sun times are the hours of darkness, during which many species of fish seek out their prey. No mystery there at all. Night fishing is a proven fish getter. The next-best conditions are an overcast sky with choppy surface water, which, in my experience, seem to lessen the debilitating influence of the sun.
Tides
There are many tangible examples of how the tidal influence affects fishing. In the simplest terms, a rising tide covers areas that were too shallow for fish to forage in a little earlier. Flounder move into estuaries, and surf-zone predators patrol newly flooded troughs and channels. Tidal movements also create currents and associated food lanes that attract opportunistic fish. Often baitfish seek shelter from strong currents behind reefs, piers and headlands. Such concentrations attract higher-order predators to a free lunch. The currents also carry a continuous stream of nutrients that activates an entire pyramid of marine life.
Tides and their associated currents benefit both the drift-fisher and those fishing at anchor. Drifters cover new fish all the time, while those at anchor use the current to send out a seductive berley trail.
At times the best fishing can be during slack tide, as I experienced some years ago at Stony Bay on the Coromandel. Peter, the camp warden, offered to take me out to a distant pin that he knew only fished well at the change of tide. So just before high tide we zoomed out in his runabout and, with the help of his GPS and fish-finder, soon found the pin. At dead slack we dropped our baits and almost instantly hooked up on big snapper. That carried on for about half an hour, after which someone threw a switch that ended the ‘bite’ as abruptly as it had begun.
Water clarity
The difference water clarity can make to my fishing success was graphically brought home only yesterday. Close in the water was laden with silt stirred up by recent storms, and even two kilometres further out it was still pretty murky. I dropped the pick in a familiar spot and set up a good berley trail in a respectable current. Not long after I hauled up a red cod as my first customer. Shortly after came another one, followed by several more. When I landed a large spiny dogfish I cut my losses and pulled the anchor.
I had to paddle out another three kilometres before finding cleaner water. However, once settled in, it did not take long before I started pulling up a procession of snapper and gurnard, but no red cod or spiny dogs. It seemed these nuisance fish preferred to feed under the cover of the murky water I had left behind.
Water temperature
Apart from our tropical summer visitors, which follow warm currents and their associated baitfish, I believe the influence of water temperature is a little overrated. True, a lot of snapper move out to deeper water during the winter months, but many stay close to shore on surprisingly shallow reefs. It is also well known that successful spawning is very temperature related for a number of aquatic species, which tend to school in large concentrations once the water reaches the optimum temperature.
Perhaps the least understood influence of temperature is how it affects the metabolism of cold-blooded fish. All fish have an optimum temperature range during which they grow best. Above and below this optimum their metabolism/digestive system slows down, making them less active and requiring less food. For us fishers this also means they are less attracted to what we dangle in front of their noses, and what attraction they do feel lasts for shorter periods.
Keeping an open mind
One can become so reliant on bite times that it becomes counter-productive. I have a fishing buddy who often arranges his trips by the bite-time clock. Quite frankly, I don’t know if it pays off, but I clearly remember when it did not. Three of us were planning a foray to a north Taranaki snapper haunt. The only contention was the time we would start. The third member of our team is an early riser and decided to hit the beach at daybreak. My mate insisted there was little point in going early because the bite time wasn’t until 11am. Since I had my kayak on his trailer I had little option but to work to that timetable.
We arrived in good time, set up the kayaks and paddled to our agreed destination, where we found our other mate just pulling up his anchor ready to leave. A glance over his large fish bin showed several good tails sticking out from under the lid. Apparently he’d had non-stop fishing action since he arrived, landing close to 50 snapper and releasing most. That was exactly the news we wanted to hear, and it had me quietly rubbing my hands in anticipation.
We spread ourselves out in the general vicinity, consigned a good berley bomb over the side and waited with baited rods. By then it was 10.30am with half an hour to go until, surely, all hell would break loose. You can probably guess what happened.
Actually, nothing at all happened. Bite time came and went without so much as a nibble. Eventually we gave up with little more to show than two or three barely-legal snapper and numb bums. Good thing old Hohepa of Maori Fishing Calendar fame was not within throttling reach.
The term ‘bite time’ suggests that fish actively feed by the clock. Which further suggests that somewhere an alarm goes off, causing all manner of fish food to suddenly pop up and just as suddenly vanish when the bite time is over. This simplistic notion is at odds with the results of many stomach autopsies I have done on sea fish, the contents of which showed that most fish had been foraging over an extended period before being caught. I have also autopsied hundreds of trout and generally met with a huge assembly of tiny food items that could only have been collected by a fish working long hours.
How often fish feed varies with water temperature, the species and their way of life. Although none feed all the time, high-speed fish, such as tropical tuna, burn off a lot of energy so have to refuel more frequently than, say, the more sedentary blue cod of Stewart Island. Most foraging fish have to move around to find what they need. So your red-hot fishing day could just as easily have been the coming together of the right fish at the right time in the right place, rather than the mysterious influence of the moon.
Fishing is such a lottery that it does not pay to get too knotted on hard-to-prove bite-time theories. Weeks can pass before a suitable fishing weekend comes along, let alone one where all the desirable ‘ducks’ are lined up in a row. In my view, over-reliance on prime bite-times inadvertently knocks one’s fishing confidence at lesser times. Doubt is like a monkey on your back, a chain around the ankles, and a damper of one’s enthusiasm. I try to minimise doubt by simplifying my tackle, by not becoming a slave to bite times and other fishing homilies, and by accepting that fishing will always be a combination of ecstasy and agony.
The best I can really hope for is to find a balance between the two.
 |
This article is reproduced with permission of |
| << back |
|
||
