Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
On July 28, 1987 I left the dock at 7:00 AM with four anglers aboard and my first mate. We ran to a wreck on Fenwick Shoal and caught a lot of small sea bass along with 17 keepers and one very large triggerfish. We had large amberjacks following a surface plug we were casting, but none actually hit it. We returned to the slip at 12:47 PM.
On July 31, 1996 we left the dock at 6:07 AM, ran out to the 20-fathom line and caught a dolphin, two yellowfin tuna and released a bunch of bluefin tuna. The wind blew 10 knots from the southwest in the morning and 15-20 in the afternoon. We ran through a squall on the way home and returned to the dock at 4:55 PM.
On July 19, 2003 I had 4,041 hours on my engine and I put 51.8 gallons of diesel in my port tank and 32 gallons in my starboard. The price of fuel was $1.43/gallon.
I know those specific details because I’ve always kept a log of what I have considered to be important details of what goes on aboard my boat. After 24-years of running my own charter boat, I now have the events from thousands of trips to review whenever I wish. While much of this information might never be used for anything but a reminder of how things were back in the “good old days”, there’s also a lot of stuff on many of the old worn out pages that is of great help today for not only catching fish, but also understanding trends within our fisheries, keeping in touch with clients, maintaining the boat and a menagerie of other issues that come along that can only be resolved by accurately reflecting back on events that occurred in the past.
From my log I can tell you the location, size, species, and number of every fish we’ve ever caught, the weather, the wind, and the sea condition, the name and address of everyone who boarded the boat, who worked as 1st Mate on any given day, the coordinates of every place we dropped anchor or started or ended a drift. I have records of every drop of fuel that went into the tanks, every oil change, every new zinc, every filter, and darn-near everything that’s been done to the boat since I’ve had her.
Some might think that keeping such detailed records would only useful to those with big boats or who are in the fishing business. Others might consider the effort is more trouble than its worth. But, I’d suggest that anyone who fishes more than just a few times a year (even those without boats) will benefit from whatever information they record over time.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re targeting blue marlin or flounder, one thing every fisherman has in common is that before each trip they must decide where to go and what to use to catch their intended quarry. If the fish are abundant and anglers have received accurate reports of where to go and how to catch them, then it should be pretty easy to head off into the right direction and pull off a catch. But a lot of times, anglers are on their own when it comes to finding fish, and all they can do is work from past experience and recollection of where they caught fish before given similar environmental factors such as time of day, tides, currents, water temperatures, time of the season and so forth.
Anglers will easily remember banner trips when they caught a limit of tuna “here” or encountered breaking stripers “there,” but over time, the many fine details that allowed those trips to be such a success can easily be forgotten or perhaps confused with other adventures. Were the fish caught on the cold or warm side of the temperature break? Did the tuna show up on the Hotdog Lump during the “second” or the “fourth” week of June? Did the flounder bite best on “minnows” or “shiners” this time last year? Those are the types of important details that can elude fishermen when the fishing is slow and when they need to remember them the most, and having it all on paper makes for an easy and accurate reminder. I know this because on days when I’m out there struggling to make a catch I’ll often flip through log pages from the last couple years to figure out what and where we were catching during that same time of the season. Sometimes it pays off and I’m reminded of another place to go or technique that worked under similar conditions. Other times it just reminds me that no matter how bad I think the fishing is right now – we’ve had worse days!
Keeping a log can be easy and takes little time if anglers start by setting themselves up with the right template. If you’re a fisherman I’d forget about spending money on any of those fancy looking logbooks they sell in marine supply stores - they’re too generic and will require the user to do too much repetitive writing. Instead, anglers should sit down at a computer and make up a one page fill-in-the-blank sheet that asks all the pertinent questions that they wish to record about conditions, locations, passengers, date, times, baits, lures, engine hours, etc. Whenever possible, it should be set up so that things can just be checked-off or circled instead of having to actually write out descriptions (example: Tide - Rising Falling, Wind – N S E W) and a few lines should also be left for comments. Even private boaters would probably do well to include a list of the names of everyone on the boat. For charter captains it’s a must. I’d suggest leaving room in the margins of the page for adding additional notes or scratch work. Since maintenance and fuel is pretty much a different issue from fishing, I keep that information on a separate sheet altogether. Every log page is referenced by both date and engine hours.
After filling out the log a few times, anglers will likely need to go back to the computer and make a few changes, so they should start by only making enough copies to get them through a half dozen trips. Once the log has been tweaked enough, copies can be run-off to cover the rest of the season. I’ve also found that to save space, it’s handy to print the log sheets on both sides of the paper. Then, all that’s left to do is to get a plastic clipboard with a storage compartment for more pages, put it all together and don’t forget the pen!
A written log can be an invaluable back-up for waypoints in the event of a GPS failure that results in a loss of memory. Over time, a log can also show anglers trends within a fishery which can help them predict what to expect in upcoming seasons. At the very least, having a log that documents one’s own fishing adventures should someday make for some great fireside reading that will surly jog fond memories of fun times on the water spent chasing fish with old friends and family.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
