3 Benefits of Keeping a Fishing Diary

A fishing journal, whether in a paper notebook, or online through an app or website - is a place to log your catches. Your observations, including successes and failures, will allow you to become more effective at identifying locations, patterns, and trends to improve your fishing.

1. Record-keeping allows you to track patterns

Keeping a fishing diary helps us by serving as a “backup memory”. By logging your fishing experience consistently, it helps to keep and organise your fishing details for reviewing later:

• Recording where you catch your fish, what you catch it on, tide, current and spot. You'll be surprised to find trends hidden in the data. By tracking your catches over time, you'll start to identify patterns and improve your predictions

• Analyse your success rates at specific locations, using different techniques, or under varying conditions

2. Use it as a learning tool

There's plenty to learn with a well-kept fishing journal

Adjust to changing conditions

A long term benefit of keeping a fishing diary is that you’ll be able to quickly predict successful patterns and even determine seasonal and yearly changes based on your own experience.

Adapt your fishing techniques and maximise your catch

By logging all the factors that may affect your fishing over time you’ll be able to experiment or tailor your fishing habits and use this knowledge to try to improve your chances of success.

• You’ll know which jig colour has worked best at any given site and depth (and even water colour makes a difference!)

• Whether current and tides at certain sites yield different effectiveness on lures or bait

• Whether modification of your set-up proved successful

• Whether garlic works as fish bait (Facepalm Fishing)

Become part of the community that shares information!

Some apps like Fish Brain have useful tools that allow you to track who is catching what, and most importantly, where!

3. It gives everyone more fish through science

When your diaries are shared with our local scientists, they will be able to analyse and study fish populations, spawning behaviour, life cycles, and vulnerable nurseries. This wealth of knowledge will enable us to know how we can protect and enhance overall marine life and marine health.

Altogether, this is going to create more fish, for everyone!

Fisher Diaries is a crucial piece of data that will enable us to have the relevant knowledge to give a boost to our marine ecosystem.

We are now piloting a Fisher Diaries program in collaboration with marine biologists and tertiary institutions in Singapore.

If you're interested to learn more or join our pilot Fisher Diaries program (Jan - Jun 2020), please sign up here!

Read more: Basic structure of a Fishing Diary

About Marine Stewards

Marine Stewards is a non-profit whose mission is to promote a healthy fishing culture through sustainable fishing guidelines, education and outreach. If you'd like to support our work, you can sign up for a membership, volunteer, donate or sponsor. We truly appreciate all your contributions!