Can Solunar Tables Put More Fish In Your Boat?
By Toby Trigger

Posted: July 26, 2015

With the Dog Days of Summer officially here finding fish is more like a wild goose chase than an act of skillful casting and retrieving.  I remember my Dad watching the wind and fishing the side of the lake where bait would most likely roll into the shoreline and the weather was monitored like the enemy, or friend depending on how it impacted the fishing.

Temperature, sky conditions, choppy water versus glassy water, all contributed to the days leading up to any fishing plans.  Now fast forward thirty years and all those thins still matter but the availability of other information is unlike anything we could have imagined back then.    Solunar tables take into account the sun/moon rise and set times and moon phase.  The best fishing times are predicted based on those factors.

A generic solunar table is not going to be accurate all across the country; it’s specific to a region.  Why?  Because the sun and moon rise and set at different times which can vary by more than 30 minutes in Montana depending on which region you’re in.   For this reason – not all solunar tables are created equally.

To make matters worse, there are discrepancies in the results of various solunar tables too. I found one solunar table that shows the best times for today as 8:25am and again at 7:55 pm (www.bradenton.com) while another shows a range of times from 8:21 – 10:23 am and 8:12pm – 10:50 pm (www.usprimetimes.com) as the best times to fish specific to my area.

So is this information useful and what exactly are we to we do with it if it’s so varied? Well, the answer is to add it to all the other natural factors we’ve already come to appreciate as indications of good days to fish and include them in our plans.

The moon and sun impact fishing on fresh water just as they do on the open ocean but I’m certainly not going to limit my fishing time to the few hours listed on a solunar table. But when my fishing time starts approaching 8:21 am today I might just hold my rod a little tighter.

(Note: the solunar table in the featured photo is from www.usprimetimes.com visit Us Prime Times to type in your zip code and get the latest solunar predictions for fishing in your area)

 

 

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