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Posts: 18
Location: White Bear lake, MN | When is the best time to fish at night? Or rather what part of the night is best?
I've had some success (throwing topwater) staying on the water until 11 pm or midnight, but I've never fished much past midnight. Is the fishing better between midnight and daybreak?
Huey |
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Posts: 670
Location: Otsego, MN | I think the first hour or two after dark is pretty good. I also will coordinate my night fishing with the lunar phases that may be taking place or the majors and minors.
So if there is a moon rise at 2:00 A.M. and if it works into my schedule I may be on the lake from midnight until 3:30 or so. The nights I have done this have been successfull and you usually have the whole lake to yourself. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Almost all of my night fishing is done targetting suspended fish, and my results are all over. It is pretty tough to say when the best time is other than watching the lunar phases like Pedro mentioned. I have found that once a moon rises my success drops more post moon rise. We still pick up fish after moon rise, but not like the time period before it.
With that said, the time between 11:00pm-2:00am has been pretty good for me. |
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Posts: 2089
| Pay attention to the moon for sure.On the lake I fish, they ate at night from opener to just about ice up.Just as much pressure at night and for some odd reason, I thought I heard jolly, old St. Nick everytime I fished the North end at night.Muskies ate round the clock.12am, 2am, 4am.Little windows.Also caught several pike up to 42" at night this season.They must have thought it was Christmas. Steve |
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| always always always know when the moonrise/set times are for the day/nite you are fishing...most gps units have it right in them...DON'T be sitting down or moving from spot to spot when one of those times occurs...
I mainly fish structure/weeds at night and have done well doing that...Love the night fishing!
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Posts: 574
| Stay out till at least 2 hours after the other boats leave. I usually fish from about 8-3ish. It seems we have had pretty good luck slightly after midnight, but have had feeding windows as late as 2:30am where we got hooks into multiple fish in a matter of minutes.
Grab a couple starbucks and stay as late as you can. I would say at least til 12:30 |
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| In my opinion weather is more important that anything else at night.
Wind picking up or slowing down
Storm coming in
Humidity picking up is huge.
We caught 26 muskie over 45" between 1:00 am to 4:00am last year
open water at night can be great also.If you are on a lake with lots of boat traffic night is even better yet.
Jeff Hanson |
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Posts: 18
Location: White Bear lake, MN | Thanks for the info.
I guess night fishing is just like day fishing and you have to pay attention to weather changes and moon phases. I'm going try to some more night fishing this summer, to avoid the crowds if nothing else. |
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Posts: 3867
| I fish at night quite a bit. I don't believe it was mentioned above that some muskies move up from deep water onto shallow structure. If you take a Q-beam out with you and shine the shallows at 4:00am you see what I mean. My night baits are 1) Topraider in "black w/ orange spots" for shallow water, 2) Raddog Spinnerbait in Black/Silver for hitting weed edges and 3) 10" Jake and Bucher Depthraiders for trolling.
Some quick night tips----Keep your boat clean of clutter especially no loose baits laying around and get some "cat's eyes" lights for the bill of your hat. |
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| Here's a little tib-bit that I learned from an old-timer as far as lure selection goes for night fishing.
He would only use top-waters when they left a trail of bubbles on the surface of the water. Why? Because during high pressure, the bubbles will pop as soon as they are formed, but during low pressure periods that bubbles will stay in tact and leave a trail on the surface of the water. And we all know that fish feed better during low pressure than high....right?
No bubbles, anything with vibrations or something that moves a lot of water. I used to switch to top-waters, jointed cranks or single-spin spinnerbaits automatically as soon as the sun set. Now I use 10" gliders after dark, because they move a lot of water and are easily seen by muskies during the first couple of hours after it get's dark. The large profile makes them an easy target.
I'm good at napping, so on bright, calm days I'll sneak in a nap during the day and stay out as long as I can after dark. GPS's have improved my night fishing because I can fish mid-lake areas that I used to have trouble finding in the dark. So if I raise a good fish early in the morning and the day turns out to be flat and sunny, I'll go back after dark using the GPS to see if she's up prowling at night. |
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Posts: 2691
Location: Pewaukee, Wisconsin | Believe me the moon rise and set is huge. Brad and Jeff said it and I will also stress that. I remember on night last year we fished all night and a 48-incher was caught just at moon rise. The next night I got a 44, 45 and a 46-incher in less than a hour. You guessed it, moon rise.
Weather is also huge. I believe it is the strongest influence. When the wind is brewing so will the fish. Humidity change is great also. I found the bite better with less humidity.
Any changes at night or during the day can spark a feeding window. Night fishing is very good. Get out and put your time in.
If I was to just pick 4 hours I would fish from 10pm till 2am. Thats just been the best for me. |
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Posts: 3867
| The Casio Pathfinder watch tells you all kinds of info on sun/moon rise/set. (You program in your location (long/lat).) You can set it for an alarm to go off as the prime times occur while fishing. And, the watch will even tell you prime times on future dates. Like a .007 spy fishing watch. I think I paid about $40 for mine. |
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| any different fishing darker water lakes? |
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Posts: 5874
| I have the Casio Forrester watch. Same thing basically as Rangers. I call it my Scott Jenkins Lunar Advisor. He told us about it, and taught me how to set it up and use it. Pretty cool when you look at it after catching a fish. You'll notice correlations to the majors and minors. I love topwater at night! |
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| The best period to be on the waters of the gin clear Niagara River is the period just before the moon rises above the tree tops and just after the moon drops below the tree tops before the sun rises.Also on gin clear water the best fishing at night is the night before--the New Moon--night after.If your fishing a river with good current of 3.0 mph plus,fish trolling upstream following intermediate structure or cross strem not lossing ground to the current,only placing the crankbaits behind structure keeping your boat above the structure.The places I like to cast at night are where creeks enter into a main river with a shallow shelf that drops deep where the warmer waters from the creek flow over.Big muskies will take the deepest avanue of approach to these bait fish holding area's at night.
Nothing beats an all Black Creeper worked ever so slow or a Red October Monster Tube in Chartruse with a glow light inside shining through.Keeping good records of your night time catches will build you data to where you can find the night time food shelf's,finding where they feed at night and doing what has worked time after time is 90% of the hunt!
Capt. Larry D. Jones |
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| Night fishing is very important especially on heavily pressured waters. The window of last light is generally good but muskies can turn on at any time throughout the entire night (or day), so you need to key on majors and minors whenever they occur during the night. Night fishing works anytime of the year too, many people do it in Summer, but try it in Spring and Fall as well |
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Posts: 697
Location: Minnetonka | Night fishing is fun... especially when you get a nice long feeding window that goes way past dark... sunset to moonrise. The moon secrets on Musky Hunter usually give us a pretty good idea how late we're gonna fish. Although sometimes they just eat all night depending on what you're using.
Edited by Hammskie 3/17/2007 7:28 PM
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