Thread: 2012 stats

good stats richard. i said i was going to keep records this year. i have never kept records over the years but i do catch my share of fish. this past summer i had a great time learning different bodies of water. i am keeping records of this years season. the only citition i caught from public waters was a monster from b/m. i do not count fish from my brothers lake because it is a pvt body but i still find it fun to catch a bunch of slabs. hey richard you need to fish some different bodies of water (like suffolk). i would be glad to show you some decent fishing on our home lakes. tight lines JIM.B o yea some would say you caught them all.

Jim- Recordkeeping takes extra time, but it helps you in the long run. Mine are not extensive, but they help me plan trips and analyze and compare results from season to season and year to year. For each trip, I keep three kinds of records.

An Excel spreadsheet records the date, destination, total caught, total > 10" caught, water temp, and anything else that was notable about the day. This could just as easily be a word processor document with tabbed columns, or pen and paper. The spreadsheet makes it easy to keep running totals, summarize by fishery, and other calculated values that are useful.

Second, I save the track logs from my handheld GPS. The machine records each day's log automatically & all I have to do is cable the GPS to my PC and let Garmin's "Mapsource" program pull the log in and display it superimposed over a topo map. The result is shown below. This was my 2009 birthday (2/24) trip to Ft. Pickett Res. Late that day, I hooked and lost one of the biggest crappie I have ever seen. I can tell you exactly where I was (to within a few feet) by opening the track record (using Mapsource) and running down the list of plot points until I come to the location recorded at 17:52. Needless to say, I wore out that spot in subsequent trips.



Third, my pictures all have dates and times in the image files. By using those dates & times as references, the GPS logs show exactly where that picture was taken.

Thanks for offering some guided tour time at the Suffolk lakes--I may take you up on that. If these lakes were a little closer you would have seen me there often. From here to the BM ramp is 1:35. In that same time, I can be launched at many attractive alternatives, including Diascund, LCR, Waller Mill, Chick Lake, Chick River, Beaverdam, James River, Lake Abel (and several other reservoirs in the Fredericksburg area), Lake Anna, Fluvanna Ruritan Lake, Rivanna Res (Charlottesville), Lake Chesdin, Pickett Res, Lee Lake, Great Creek Watershed Lake (Lawrenceville), Sandy River Res, Briery Creek Lake, Gaston, and (depending on traffic) Rudd's Creek. In addition to competing choices, my boat's not set up right for the Suffolk lakes. If there was an easy way to swap my 48 off and 9.9 on the boat, that would eliminate a major obstacle.

Originally Posted by jim.b

o yea some would say you caught them all.

I exercise as many as possible but release everything above 13" and below 10" and only keep the ones in between when there's at least 6. For 2012, I landed 6+ keepers only 19 out of 71 trips. If that's "all of them" in 11 different fisheries, then I'd better learn how to play golf!

2013 HAS to be better.

Congrats on 2012. Winning 2 Bashes is the icing on the cake.
Best of luck in 2013