Creating a Proper Fishing Report

This topic may be foreign to some people, but having and maintaining good fishing reports can be a great educational tool. It can improve you as an angler and your overall understanding of fishing.  Many anglers do not take the time to write these reports because they find it tedious and time consuming.  However, once you become accustomed to writing the reports, it only takes a short amount of time to complete.  Below is an example of a fishing report and what useful information it may contain. The reports are always adaptable and user specific so certain information may be added or omitted depending on the individual.

Location: Big Creek  2/27/2011
Time Fished: 2:00 - 5:30 pm
Water Clarity: 2 FOW
Water temp: ICE BABY!!!!! 11" of good, hard ice.  Edges perfectly fine too, skiff of snow on top of the ice
Depth fished: 23-25 FOW
Presentation: 4 MM Fiskas Wolfram (Yellow), 1/16 oz Northland Forage Minnow (Glow Rainbow), Little Atom Micro Nuggie (Glow, Glow Blue)
Species Sought: FISH!
Fish caught: 46 Gills (4 7/8"-9.25”), 6 Crappie (7.0-10.25")

Day three of my ice fishing binge took a little bit of motivation to get out the door; I can tell that it's starting the late ice season.  The weather was overcast with a slight breeze out of the north with warm temps when I arrived at Big Creek.  I decided to fish a location which doesn't get a bunch of pressure and sure enough when I arrived I didn't see any holes drilled since at least the thaw last week.  In fact there wasn't anyone fishing within 250 yards of me minus one guy who stopped by and said that he wasn't having much luck.

The fishing was phenomenal when i arrived and i attribute that to the lack of pressure on these fish as well as the cloudy water.  I had my "limit" of 8"+ gills within 40 minutes of fishing but about an hour and a half into the trip the wind started to pick up out of the north and the temps started dropping and the fish started to get tight lipped.   

In the report above, you can see that I always include a couple of key pieces of information in the beginning and put it in bold print.  I always follow this format to keep it consistent and easy to identify when scanning through reports.  Other helpful information might include barometric pressure readings, weather/conditions, GPS coordinates, etc.  Obviously, if you are posting these reports online you might want to keep the GPS cords to yourself! LOL!

The second part of the report just gives a short synopsis of the outing.  It may include observations, strategies, thoughts, etc.  If you fish the same lake over and over this part allows you to differentiate each outing so you can keep them straight in the future.  You can also put together some ideas in this section as a way to "connect the dots" for the next time you are out fishing and experiencing similar conditions or results based on your success (or lack thereof).  You can also include pictures, which is always nice, as it makes it easier to recall the outing.

You can create these reports on just about any program or software you like.  Some guys use Microsoft Word or Excel, I've found Blogger to actually work quite well too.  One nice feature about Blogger is the report can be either private or public; which ever you please.  If you make a template, it really speeds up the time it takes to create reports and the above mentioned programs each allow you to do that.

So, with the ice season knocking on the door, try to implement this protocol into your routine and see how much it benefits you in future trips.