Experts shed light on the moon phase and its importance to catching fish.
By Doug Olander July 2, 2018 .
The Perplexing Moon Mystery
Yet one might conclude that the moon, more than anything else, dictates fishing success or lack thereof. I can’t begin to count the times I’ve spent tough if not fruitless days on the water in this or that fishing paradise only to be told, “Well, I’m not surprised, since we have a full moon” or, conversely, “Well, I’m not surprised, since it’s a new moon now. Too bad you couldn’t have come on the full moon.”
Capt. Kevin Nakamura hears the same sort of reasoning around Hawaii’s Big Island, where he charters for big-game pelagics. “It can’t be that our anglers just had bad luck, and they weren’t going to catch even if it was on fire. So it has to be the moon,” he says.
“ Talk to enough guys who make their living connecting anglers to fish about the effect of moon phase on fishing, and a clear pattern emerges: There is no pattern. .”
While the moon can rise, it can’t rise to its own defense. So I set out to try to get a handle on this perplexing moon mystery. After all, by knowing the truth about the effect of the lunar condition on fish behavior, I could schedule all my future fishing when it has to be hot. Then never again will I be told that if I’d just come on the right moon phase, I’d have caught fish all day long.
After reviewing studies and interviewing more than 35 professional captains and scientists, I have gained some real insight into how and where lunar phase often does and doesn’t matter, and I reached one take-away (but more on that later).
Of course there’s no shortage of old wives’ tales and unfounded superstitious beliefs, as the “knowledge” of many weekend anglers confirms. Still, there are some specific fisheries where a clear empirical or scientific cause-and-result links moon phase to the behavior of certain fishes.
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