Catching Muskies by the Numbers BY JOEL TINKER (Top Tackle Guide Service) (Posted Apr. 15, 2002) Musky fishermen are a strange bunch. It seems there is no end to the lengths we will go to get an edge in our fishing. I’m no different. I’m always looking for the latest ideas and thoughts of people who chase these fish. During all the time that I’ve spent looking elsewhere for new information, I knew that I had some very useful stuff right at my fingertips. But how could I use it? How could I tap into its secrets? For the last twelve years I have keep a log of each day that I’ve fished. After the first two years I got better at logging the more important and pertinent information that I thought would lead me to more and bigger muskies. I knew that there were a lot of things being told by all this data, but I had no way of compile it, and thus, understand and make sense of it. Some things were obvious, but I always wondered if there were other things this information could be telling me that I was missing. With the advent of this wonderful thing called The Home P/C all this has changed. Now there was a way for the layman to compile information like a pro and get understandable, reliable results. I sat down and put as much of my log into a database as I could. Having never used a database before, I didn’t know what to expect.  The results have been fun and enlightening. I would encourage anyone to do it. If you fish a lot or take your fishing very seriously, the benefits are well worth it. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination. The key, I have found, is to collect the correct information and in enough detail to make it useful. If you’re able to do that, you will be amazed at what you will find. It is a way to have your fishing reflected in a clear and concise manor. It takes all the guesswork out of analyzing your log and it eliminates any personal bias that may creep into your interpretation of it. When it comes right down to it, it’s all about the numbers. Do the numbers support your long held beliefs about when and how you catch fish? Do they show statistically what you have always believed to be true? I learned, and am still learning, from my new database that some of the things I have held as true for so long are indeed supported by the numbers. Others were just false illusions that over the years I had convinced myself to be true. This is far from a scientific look at the data contained in my log. Rather, it is just one fisherman trying to make sense of all of my days of fishing. It is an attempt to add some clarity to what has grown to be too much information for my available mental "disk space". Every year mine seems to decrease a bit more - I think they call it “old age”. I offer it to others mostly for comparison sake and for those new to the sport. Hopefully, it sheds some insight into these fish (if not, I have wasted a lot of years) and offers some clues to catching them. It is, more than anything else, a reflection of MY fishing, on the waters where I do it. I don’t think it can be analyzed much deeper than that. It certainly contains all the biases that I carry with me when I hit the water. I also offer it as a demonstration of how useful this type of record keeping can be and how fun it can be to investigate it when you’re done. So lets dive in and take a look at ten years of my life - by the numbers. It may help to paint a little picture of how this information is laid out. I entered all the fish I had caught in the last ten years chronologically into the database by inch size. Then information was recorded for each of these fish in the following fourteen categories: Date Caught Lake Time of Day Water Temp Weather - this was broke down into sunny, partly cloudy, overcast, rain/snow. Wind Direction Wind Speed Lure Used - which included “sucker” if that was the case. Method - this broke into casting, trolling, jigging, live bait. Type of Structure - here I tried as best I could to put down what I thought the fish was relating to at the time of the catch, it broke down as weed, rock, wood, drop-off, open water. Water Depth - here I logged the total depth from where I thought the fish came from, not the depth the fish may have been at. Water Clarity - this was a rating of 1, 2, or 3, based on 1 being clear water and 3 being heavy stained water. Multi Fish Day - this category let me know if the fish was boated on a day where more than one fish was caught and by entering the number of fish caught that day I could later track how many 2, 3, 4, etc. fish days I have had. Weight - as I weigh many of my larger fish over 30#s, I put this into the database. For those of you that have never used a database before let me give you an idea of what it can do for you once you have all the information entered. These fourteen “fields” can now be cross-referenced to be as specific or as general as you want. For example: you could request the program to get you a list as general as, “Give me a list of all the fish over 40”s I have ever caught”. Or you could be as specific as to ask, “Give me a list of all the fish over 45”s that I have ever caught out of lake X on a sunny day with the wind blowing out of the West while trolling a Depth Raider between 11 AM and 2 PM”. You can begin to see how endless the information can become, and how enlightening. And the great thing is your results can be displayed in a number of different ways. You can generate reports, tables, and graphs, all of which paint a much clearer picture of what all these thousands of pieces of data are trying to tell you. For the sack of this article, I kept things pretty simple. One reason I keep the records that I do is to try to get a handle on the important information that puts me onto larger fish. The following graphs are all fairly simple, yet they are still quit informative. I have done a comparison of all 387 fish in my database against all the fish over 30#s that I have caught in relation to six criteria: weather, water temp, wind speed, wind direction, structure, and water depth. Would I find any “hidden secrets” that I did not know existed? Would I dispel any “old myths” that I thought were true? This graph held no real surprises for me, but it may be of interest to some. It does tend to go against the old adage, “more and bigger fish come on the ugly fishing days”. As you can see, I boat 43% of my fish on sunny days! That number falls WAY off during the ugly rain/snow days. I think that is due to most barometer movements taking place before the actual front reaches you. Most of my good musky fishing comes just prior to the rain/snow arriving and not during it or during periods of stable weather. The incidence of big fish boated stays the same no matter the weather, just fewer of them on the ugly days. This is an interesting graph. It bears out what I had always believed - I catch most of my fish in cooler water conditions. But, I was surprised to see how few of them came once the water had fallen below 40 degrees. I knew that number would go down, but I did not expect it to be that severe. It also shows that most of my big fish come from cooler water and while the numbers of fish go down when water temps get below 40 degrees, the incidents of contacting bigger fish go up. No surprise there. I did not realize that I had NEVER boated a 30# fish when the water temp was above 80 degrees. This number is no doubt skewed by the fact that I tend to reduce my musky fishing during times of very warm surface waters for the sake of the fish. The fact that most of my 30# fish come in the 50-59 degree range is probably a reflection of how good the fishing gets just prior to and just after turnover. It’s a great time to be on the water! Does big wind mean big fish? The answer for me is both yes and no! While the incident rate remains pretty consistent, I do catch fewer big fish as the wind starts to get out of control. I believe that is probably due to less effective boat control. It’s just plain harder to boat fish when the wild winds are having their way with you. Maybe a bit of a surprise to some is the amount of larger fish that are taken on calm or nearly calm days. Again, it bucks the old saying of, “ugly weather, big fish”. For those that wonder how skewed these numbers are for reasons of not fishing during big winds, for me at least, this would not be accurate. Because I live close to Lake Superior, I go to the lake no matter what it is doing at my house and no matter what the weather forecast. I have been burned too many times in the past for staying home only to have friends tell me they fished all day with different weather than I had at my house. Now I just go. If I get blown off, I get blown off, but I fish till the weather no longer allows me to. This graph was a bit of an eye-opener for me for several reasons. First, I would have said that there was no real statistical advantage to wind direction for boating fish. It’s pretty obvious from the graph that I catch most of my fish during some kind of South wind. It is also apparent that East winds are not very good.  I would have said that I catch just as many fish during Easterly winds as any other……….wrong! I would have also said that I boat just as many big fish during Easterly winds……………way wrong!! I was also surprised at how drastically the incidence of bigger fish jumped during South and Southwest winds. I always knew that I loved calm winds for big fish (you can see why in the graph), but the Southerly connection took me by surprise. I was shocked to see that I had NEVER boated a 30# fish in an East or Northeast wind! And what is up with the West wind………catch a few fish, but no 30’s? Interesting. First let me say that this next graph is certainly a reflection of my fishing. I tend to catch my fish deeper than many folks because I spend the majority of my time (about 60%) on clear water. Also, I fish nearly every day in the months of October and November when most of the musky patterns tend to be deep patterns regardless of water clarity. Also, much of my weed fishing is done targeting deep weeds in the 18-26 foot range. Keep in mind that the water depth shown is the overall depth where the fish were caught not the depth that the fish were at. It is at times impossible to know what depth the fish were holding at. It is interesting that there is a significant increase in the incidence of bigger fish for that 10-19 foot range. I think some of the explanation for that comes in the next graph. I think looking at this graph helps to answer the increased incidence of big fish in the 10-19 foot range on the last graph. Look at the totals for “rock/wood”. Most of the time when I target these structure elements in the waters I fish they tend to fall into those depths. It tells me that I might be missing something by not looking to those structure elements more. I think by looking at this “structure” graph you can see why so many of my fish show up in relatively deep water (20-29 foot range from above). Most come from fishing some kind of drop and those are usually deeper. Open water fishing is by its very nature done in and over deeper water. And lastly, much of the weed fishing that I do on clear water tends to be a deeper pattern. It is interesting that the incidence of big fish tends to stay the same regardless of the type of structure being focused on except for rock or wood. So what did we learn, or more importantly, what did I learn. By reviewing the graphs above I think it is safe to say that I should get excited when I see a sunny day with calm or near calm winds, which are out of the south/southwest when the water temps are in the 40-59 degree range. I should concentrate on some type of drop and if it has some type of rock/wood present, all the better. Sounds like a no-brainer to me, knew it all along………………ya right! The next project for me and my database will be to examine these 387 fish for correlations to catch rates by moon phase. My years of fishing tells me there is a statistical advantage at times, but will the numbers bear this out? Stay tuned for the results. Whether you can use any of the above information to help you catch more fish may be debatable, but I think you would have to agree that starting your own database could reveal some interesting things. We have just scratched the surface here as to what is possible. If you think this is something you would be interested in and have questions, I can give you my limited advice. I’m by no means a computer expert, so if I can do it, so can you. I have no doubt that I will put extra fish in the boat this next season for my efforts. Now all I have to due is find a boat manufacturer who builds in a laptop! Hey, what about a GPS …….hooked into my database………..all I do is put in the information…………… automatically takes me …………………… spot that I should be fishing…………………………….conditions on that particular day…………………………………………… I enter……………………………………. size of the fish………………………………………….machine could do the rest………………………… Sorry, its hard to stay focused some times. Anyway, as I said at the beginning, we are a strange bunch.