Friday, May 5, brings the full moon for this month, and I have long advocated the May full moon as a prime-time fishing opportunity. I have some personal circumstantial evidence to support the claim, and I have read many other credible reports that lunar cycles affect fishing success.
The only definitive knowledge I have on the subject is that the best day to go fishing is any day you get a chance to go fishing. But for years, so-called lunar tables have forecast the optimal times each day for hunting and fishing based on the sun, tides and moon stage.
I never have put much stock in these schedules’ predictions of fish and game animal movements on a given day, but I am 100 percent sure that the full moon exerts great force on our planet to produce the changing tides and, as is alleged, crazy behavior in some humans. Still, the effect on fishing seems suspicious.
I love the almanac calendar that I pick up each year at Bloomsdale Bank. My family has had similar versions hanging on refrigerators for as long as I remember, but the little “best, good, fair, poor” fish-symbol daily predictions have never aligned with success for me.
I recall reading an article several years ago about how more record-breaking fish have been caught on days with a full moon than in any other phase. I couldn’t cite that source or remember where I first saw it, but I was always skeptical, although I didn’t have a good idea how to check it myself.
These days you can find anything on the internet, so I searched for a connection between the dates world-record fish were caught and the full moon. I found a boatload of potential sources, but many seemed to try to cover all ends of spectrum.
The entry I liked the best was a site named Fishing Status with a story written by “exfernal.” (That’s not too suspicious, is it?) The author said he/she entered the dates of 545 world records into a moon phase calculator and out came the correlative data.
According to the article, 85 records were landed on the same date as a full moon, and 84 top catches came on the day of a new moon (when the moon goes dark). Eighty-three record fish were landed in conjunction with the first quarter, which is exactly halfway between a new and full moon each month. The waxing and waning phases, which are between the quarters and give us the crescent and three-quarter moons, each had fewer.
All that was too complicated for me, so I made a local test of my own. I went to the state Department of Conservation website and found 120 Missouri-record fish catches. I entered those dates into a website calculator that looked back to what the moon was doing that night.
Rather than make my research as detailed as the exfernal expert, I grouped the information into four days before or after a full or new moon, and all the other days. That left me with 16 full or new moon days and about 14 in between for the 29 to 30-day moon cycle.
Going all the way back to a 13-pound, 14-ounce largemouth bass caught at Bull Shoals Lake on April 21, 1961, I found 37 record fish in the full-moon period, 36 top catches near the new moon date, and 47 immortalized anglers in the 14-day “neither” category.
My numbers do not make or break anyone else’s theory, but the data could also be affected by people simply thinking they will catch more fish during a full or new moon, so they are more likely to try their luck on those days.
I know that around the full moon in May is when the big bluegill start making their way to the shallow water to scope out spawning spots. I also have two 7.5-pound bass on my wall from my favorite farm pond near High Ridge. One I caught on May 3, 1985, and the other on May 3, 1996. I did not have to put those dates in the calculator because I remember those full moon nights vividly.
John Winkelman has been writing about outdoors news and issues in Jefferson County for more than 30 years and is the Associate Editor for Outdoor Guide Magazine. If you have story ideas for the Leader outdoor news page, e-mail ogmjohnw@aol.com, and you can find more outdoor news and updates at johnjwink.com.
CUTLINE
A pair of High Ridge largemouth bass caught on full moon nights 11 years apart look good on the wall, but they offer no proof that any phase of the moon is better for fishing.