Harvest Moon

[CTom]

Big and beautiful tonight. The clouds cleared out right about 445 this afternoon and left us with glass clear skies. It sure does light up the night.

[no1son]

So big and bright, it almost seemed like a person could reach out and touch it.

[fishervet]

I saw it from here......

[no1son]

On the night of the full moon, I was fishing carp and had a real active bite just before moon rise. The next evening that same clock time was dead; so the next one I moved up my fishing by about six hours before moon rise and again had good fishing, which slacked off. I am not a big fan of moon up/moon down, but I seemed to hit a down bite period a little later the third night (last night), but that was hard to tell since there was enough breeze to make line control and line watching work and I did have a few baits go missing but couldn't tell if it was peckpecksuck over the edge bite or not.

However last evening, I changed my presentation after the edge bite became impossible to a castout with a two foot leader (same line as the running line) beyond a 1 oz sinker. That brought action where casting out just the lighter jighead with its dough ball has not for a while. In fact three of the four carp I took that way were bolt strikes that the #2 circle hook connected with just perfectly, one a 31" torpedo. The fourth was a solid take and hold that we have not been generally getting so much on the nibblesuck bite, except at peak bite times.

That was during the gap between the peaks of moon up and moon down as well. So maybe moon up and moon down influences where carp forage more than when they do. ??? We used to use 2 oz leads and 2/0 circle hooks on 40# braid for catfish and a bit for carp, but our catch that way fell way off. Maybe the lighter sinker, smaller hook and lighter line will change that for both species. We found out real early though that the drag must be set carefully to cushion the smaller hooks and lighter lines, just like we have figured out the best bite detection on over the side is a lighter tipped rod, even a commercial crappie rod like a Zebco with a bit of backbone works real well when one managed the drag on the reel properly. I am using a Gander Mountain 9' steelhead rod for casting and that works real well, too.