How and What do you record about your catches?

[tomino2112]

Do you guys keep any fishing journal? Do you use some phone app, do you prefer simple notebook? Any other formats? Do you record your catches at all?

If you do, what do you deem to be important to record?

I thought of:

• Species
• Weight
• Location
• Bait
• Gear used

 

[theartist]

Yep as a creative geek with too much time on my hands I've done the lot but realised eventually the most important thing is to record the memories, stats are great but I found it's better to log the things that made the day special too.

Things like photos for the odd fish both big and small
The distance you walked or the traffic you sat in
Wildlife seen
The Weather
The Date
They way you fished like a genius
The way you fished like an idiot
The folk you met on the way
Your dad asking you a question then saying "eh!" EVERYTIME you reply
Then seeing his face when he finally catches something on a cold day.

Sometimes too many stats seem like a blur of numbers when you look back on them but throw in a story along the way and every trip can be an adventure, plus you learn a lot more as it can register easier when you re-read them as a simple diary entry.

 

[no-one in particular]

Excel worksheet
Head Columns A, B, C etc with but you can choose whatever you want:-
day, month, year, wind strength, wind direction, weather, air temp, water temp, barometric pressure, water colour, moon phase, notes, venue, bait. Then score columns for species, tench, carp, bream ect.
Fill it in when I get home, doesn't take long, 5 mins if that..
I started doing it on paper but then transferred it to excel some years ago and used it ever since. Fairly easy and straight forward.
The best thing is you can sort the information anyway which way. Venue x, bait y, species z sort of thing. Or wind x, weather y species, z. No end of permutations-You can make some nice graphs on excel; Useful once you built up a record.

Which is the opposite of Artists, but then he is an artist and I am not. It just depends what you think you may want in the future, nice journal or data for information. Personally I wish I had done both looking back but I have a nice folder on the computer with all my fishing pics so sort of makes up for it a bit.

 

[smudger172]

Just a photograph.. I can remember everything from looking at a picture. which is amazing as most of the time i cant remember where i have left my glasses........:wh

 

[S-Kippy]

I used to write it all down in a journal but that was when I was trout fishing almost to the exclusion of anything else. I filled the book, never started another and never have recorded my coarse exploits. I know plenty who do and Big Dave seems to be on first name terms with every carp, barbel and zander within about 30 miles of Guildford. Not only can he tell you what fish you've just caught but also what it weighs [or weighed] and who's caught it before [usually him] where, when and on what bait.

I yorked him with that mirror the other night though. He didn't recognise it and it wasn't a known mirror in there called "Marmite" which usually comes out around 27lb.

I think the HDYGO thread is about as close as it gets for me and will make for interesting reading in a few years....not that it isn't already. I love reading about other peoples exploits and sharing mine.

 

[S-Kippy]

Just a photograph.. I can remember everything from looking at a picture. which is amazing as most of the time i cant remember where i have left my glasses........:wh

They're in the kitchen !

 

[terry m]

Great question, I was thinking about this the other day.

I have two levels of reporting.

For all pike, it is date, method, swim, bait, weight etc. I have been doing this for many many years now. And it is clear when I analyse that data (sad I know) that you can see clear trends where 9in particular) different waters are more productive at different times of the year, and specific swims throw up the big fish (not the same fish) with regularity.

For all other species I simply list out specimen size fish with venue just to be able to look back on.

Strangely enough I take very few photographs of fish.

 

[smudger172]

They're in the kitchen !

Thanks.........

 

[steve2]

I always kept and still keep some of my early diaries from when I first started fishing and they show me just much the waters I then fished have changed.
Now most trips and details are stored in my memory I will take very few pictures of fish unless it’s some thing special. By special I don’t just mean size but the shape and colour of the fish.

 

[tomino2112]

Yep as a creative geek with too much time on my hands I've done the lot but realised eventually the most important thing is to record the memories, stats are great but I found it's better to log the things that made the day special too.

Things like photos for the odd fish both big and small
The distance you walked or the traffic you sat in
Wildlife seen
The Weather
The Date
They way you fished like a genius
The way you fished like an idiot
The folk you met on the way
Your dad asking you a question then saying "eh!" EVERYTIME you reply
Then seeing his face when he finally catches something on a cold day.

Sometimes too many stats seem like a blur of numbers when you look back on them but throw in a story along the way and every trip can be an adventure, plus you learn a lot more as it can register easier when you re-read them as a simple diary entry.

Very interesting. Those are some amazing drawings you have on Etsy, especially love the perch!

 

[tomino2112]

Personally I wish I had done both looking back but I have a nice folder on the computer with all my fishing pics so sort of makes up for it a bit.

Out of curiosity, how do you backup all this data? What if your PC brakes?

 

[tomino2112]

Interesting how everyone loves the HDYGO topic, obviously there are some social networks for fisherman out there that would be more suitable for this purpose, is there a reason you dont use them (or just dont know about them?).

 

[theartist]

Out of curiosity, how do you backup all this data? What if your PC brakes?

Save it to a usb stick or external hard drive mate

 

[tomino2112]

Save it to a usb stick or external hard drive mate

Still not very reliable. These days I find that any kind of cloud storage is more reliable than whatever you could do at home. That is if you are really not against storing things online (obviously in some private and secure place)

 

[theartist]

Still not very reliable. These days I find that any kind of cloud storage is more reliable than whatever you could do at home. That is if you are really not against storing things online (obviously in some private and secure place)

The words online, private and secure together worry me more

 

[tomino2112]

The words online, private and secure together worry me more

Depends what do you value more. The 1:XXXXXXXXXX chance that someone would get hold of your data from some proper providers (Google, amazon etc) or the 1:XX chance that your hardware is going to brake and you loose everything

 

[theartist]

Depends what do you value more. The 1:XXXXXXXXXX chance that someone would get hold of your data from some proper providers (Google, amazon etc) or the 1:XX chance that your hardware is going to brake and you loose everything

Have sent pm mate, at the end of the day they can get our bank details online so they can easy get/corrupt/claim our photos, maybe a combination of both would be best.

 

[nottskev]

I tried keeping a handwritten diary in a hard-backed notebook. I set of enthusiastically, but didn't get past page 2.

I do make a habit of writing down the occasional nuggets that you hear from other anglers -this area fishes in September, the bream are in the 2 pegs below the wall etc

I never took photos- except in Ireland, for some reason -probably because we took photos on holiday then, rather than posting pics of our dinner on social media- until I bought a phone with a camera, and that's still a novelty so I take pics of routine rather than exceptional things, like big fish.

Since coming on FM, I post something on HDYGO. I like to read what people have been doing. It gives fishing a real context - read the fishing papers, and nobody has a mediocre day and the fish are all huge. And it has some unexpected spin-offs. For example, on a miserable and unsuccessful day, I've sometimes persevered when I was tempted to jack it in so I've got something to report!

There's definitely some connection between motivation and memory, or my memory, at least. I'm capable of forgetting anything but fishing information.
There are not many chub around here these days, and I was idly wondering just now where I'll go when it gets colder. I remembered seeing a bloke catch 3 chub on steak and mince. It was in 2007 25 miles away, but I could could go straight to the peg tomorrow and guess the depth under the float to within a few inches. I bet I'm not the only one with a selective memory.

 

[theartist]

There's definitely some connection between motivation and memory, or my memory, at least. I'm capable of forgetting anything but fishing information.
There are not many chub around here these days, and I was idly wondering just now where I'll go when it gets colder. I remembered seeing a bloke catch 3 chub on steak and mince. It was in 2007 25 miles away, but I could could go straight to the peg tomorrow and guess the depth under the float to within a few inches. I bet I'm not the only one with a selective memory.

Yeah spot on mate I reckon it's the hunter's brain, we can remember a couple of fish from a swim last century but struggle with the date of the missus' birthday/

 

[flightliner]

A foto, record the weight in my fishing log that i carry in my rucky. Back up is a kwic pencilled note on the back of a cupboard door in my garage.