Moon phases OR water temperatures?

[redearhoosier]

Which is more important in deciding when the gills/crackers spawn, water temperatures or moon phases?

Or is it something else entirely, like a biological clock?? If it's water temperatures, what degrees would you say is best?

[SKs Crappie Catching Adventures]

I've seen in the past couple weeks the male redear avoid the shallows any lower than 70°...... I've seen the water temp up to 72° but still haven't caught a female yet....
Most of the males are fairly colored up so it won't be long....
I know there moon phase plays a roll but I don't depend on it to go fishn, I go when I can.....

[Ketchn]

I don't know for sure but I often wonder why one day is the day and the next is not
there are sure enough a million reasons according to the in the know crowd ,but like what I see with crappie I think there is some sort of magic and it varies from water body to water body
and from what I can tell it isn't always the same set of ingredients
wow was that helpful or what

[D10]

I think it is mainly related to consistent water temperatures but moon phase is a secondary trigger for the spawn.


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[Ketchn]

I will hold as well on no fluctuation on water temps and raise you a steady water level

[Eagle 1]

Neither seems to be a accurate as once believed . jmo

[deathb4disco]

I think it is mainly related to consistent water temperatures but moon phase is a secondary trigger for the spawn.

This ^^^^

[Alphahawk]

For years I preached the full moon deal on spawning bluegill. Then I started looking at my records. The spawn and full moon did not add up. I quit keeping records a while back but I no longer pay any attention the the full moon. I also did a lot of research on the subject....no scientific evidence at all that the full moon affects the bluegill spawn. I do what SK suggested...I just go anytime I can. Looking back at records I do keep now...the past 2 years of youtube videos.....I found many bedding fish well before...well after, and some on or around the full moon.


Regards

[Fishfishwish]

If you fish every day, does it matter?

Good info on the spawn (temps and some moon phase) but for bass at link below. May have some applicability to gills.

YouTube

[D10]

Somewhat related to this topic is a study we did about a decade ago. We used to fertilize some of our lakes to boost productivity and anglers would complain and say that the fish wouldn’t bite after we fertilized for a little while. So I designed a single line sampling (fishing) experiment where we fished for bluegill a month before and a month after we fertilized. We recorded a bunch of environmental variables like water temp, pH, conductivity and also other variables like # of days after fertilizing, barometric pressure and lunar phase and also kept up with the number of bluegill we caught. We sampled on random dates and locations on this lake with only red wrigglers. Fishing like this actually becomes work when it is structure like this and you don’t have the freedom to fish known beds. But I shouldn’t complain too much! Anyway, what variables do you think affected our catch rates the most? Catch rates weren’t affected by most of the variables, including fertilizing. Water temperature had the greatest impact on bluegill catch rate and lunar phase was a distant second. At the time, we didn’t look at it this way but if I went back and looked when catch rates were the highest, it was probably centered around the peak of the spawn during our sample period.


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