The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015 (19 page)

December 11–25

• One hour before and one hour after high tides, and one hour before and one hour after low tides. (The times of high tides for Boston are given on the
  Calendar
  [>]
  pages; also see the
  Tide Corrections
  [>]
  . Inland, the times for high tides correspond with the times when the Moon is due south. Low tides are halfway between high tides.)
  
• During the “morning rise” (after sunup for a spell) and the “evening rise” (just before sundown and the hour or so after).
  
• During the rise and set of the Moon.
  
• When the barometer is steady or on the rise. (But even during stormy periods, the fish aren’t going to give up feeding. The smart fisherman will find just the right bait.)
  
• When there is a hatch of flies—caddis flies or mayflies, commonly.
  
• When the breeze is from a westerly quarter, rather than from the north or east.
  
• When the water is still or slightly rippled, rather than during a wind.
  

How to Estimate the Weight of a Fish

Measure the fish from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. Then measure its girth at the thickest portion of its midsection.

The weight of a fat-bodied fish (bass, salmon) = (length × girth × girth)/800

The weight of a slender fish (trout, northern pike) = (length × girth × girth)/900

Example:
If a fish is 20 inches long and has a 12-inch girth, its estimated weight is (20 × 12 × 12)/900 = 2,880/900 = 3.2 pounds

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night: Good Lord, deliver us!

–
old Scottish prayer

Well, some fishermen prefer taking their bumps in the night to receiving divine deliverance any day.

Your last frontier for fantastic fishing may be nearer than fabled places such as Kamchatka, Patagonia, Cuba, and the like; it may be as close as your favorite home fishing hole. The transforming trick is to fish this familiar water at night.

Both the allure and the article of faith of night fishing is that if a river, lake, or stream routinely produces bigger-than-average fish in daylight, the fish caught at night will be much larger, especially if the species are scotopic, or have good vision under low light, such as walleyes and bass. Perhaps the best night fishing of all is for old brown trout whoppers, which tend totally to nocturnal feeding, being both scotopic, and, seemingly, photophobic, or afraid of the light.

In addition to their acute night vision, brown trout and walleyes have super-sensitive lateral lines plus sharp hearing, which enable them to locate prey species from their vibrations and sounds. Brook and rainbow trout are also good potential catches by night fishermen. The best night fishing species may be adept at finding their prey in the dark, but they seem to have trouble locating their predators and will often feed right under the tip of the angler’s rod.

For night angler success and safety, the water must be familiar because it has been fished often by daylight; a 100-yard stretch of a river or stream is more than enough. A good way to ease into night fishing is to stay until well after dark at a favorite spot once in a while and observe what goes on. From 50 years of night fishing, I now realize that many of my favorite places are just one pool in a river or stream. In fact, one pool on my home brown trout stream is known as The Night Hole.

Occasionally, nymph emergences or adult egg-laying flights of the giant salmon fly occur at night on the home stream water I know best, but I have never enjoyed the epic night fishing that a fabled “super hatch” produces because fast, rocky, stone fly water is too dangerous in the dark. Falling, hitting the head on a boulder, and drowning is a common cause of angler deaths, even in broad daylight. Fortunately, much of the best night fishing takes place in environments with fewer boulders and slower flows.

Some of the best night fishing for trout is during major night hatches of our largest mayflies, the western green drake, the brown drake, and, in particular, the Hex (Hexagenia limbata)—arguably North America’s largest mayfly. The latter two species inhabit soft-bottom lakes and quick-silty streams that can be hazardous, boot-sucking traps for wading anglers.

Nonwading night fishing for big walleyes from shore or boats in lakes and rivers can be excellent. After sundown, big walleyes start herding baitfish into the shallows, particularly where smaller streams flow into a lake or river. This is when huge, depths-loving walleyes can be taken in scant inches of water, often on floating plugs.

Another upside of night fishing is that the crowds are gone; the downside is that there is no one to fish you out when you fall in or make some self-injurious bump in the night of your own. So, take along your own deliverer, a fishing buddy. Strong insect repellent helps with the gazillions of buzzing, biting beasties. A quality headlamp is mandatory, preferably one with a red lens mode to preserve your night vision, help in avoiding hazards, and use in changing flies and lures, untangling leaders, landing and unhooking monsters, and so forth. Just avoid shining the light on the water.

Sounds, the bumps in the night of huge feeding fish, are often the only means of locating and casting to them in the dark. You notice more sounds than on the same water in daylight: coyotes, singing from the bank just behind you; owls hooting; and, hopefully, the swish of the millions of wings of a Hex hatch that will inspire “glops” of brown trout to feast on them like hogs slopping in a trough. Then there’s the occasional cougar, which, during a good brown drake hatch one night, was continuously screaming from the ridge just behind us; my buddy and I retreated to the nearest bar.

Ghoulies, ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, among other things that go bump in the night? You learn to release weird catches at night: bats on the back cast; skunks, even; and sometimes yourself from lurking coils of barbed wire that strike like rattlesnakes. One night, my buddy hooked a beaver, which was merely interesting until he insisted on landing it. We returned in the wee hours, beslimed, brush-torn, and babbling weird truths.

Myths are perpetuated by writers who may not have fished much at night: that a full Moon ruins night fishing and that only very large wet flies or lures that “move lots of water” will work at night. In The Night Hole one full Moon night, I felt through my waders the movements of a big brown trout feeding on tiny caddis flies. I choked up on the rod so that I could dap a tiny (#18) Elk Hair Caddis on the trout’s neb and was rewarded by the hooked brute repeatedly bucking into the air across the pool, leaving a phosphorescent bubble contrail. I took my lifetime largest brown trout and largest rainbow trout at night on small dry flies: the 30-inch brown trout on a #14 caddis imitation and the 28-inch rainbow on a minuscule #20 Griffith’s Gnat.

My longtime night fishing buddy was recently fishing the Hex hatch with a young friend at 2:00 A.M. on a dream of an almost Shakespearean midsummer night: “Fairies,” flotillas of huge Hex duns, came sailboating down, and the air was a-swish with the wings of mating Hex spinners. Young friend, waist deep, was gently moving a 26-inch brown trout back and forth in the water to revive it prior to release when the big brown yawned and gulped yet one more of the big Hex duns floating down. Startled, young friend shuffled one step to the side and dropped into a hole so deep that his hat was floating. This says a lot about fishing in the dark.

Night fishing is not for everyone, but every angler should try it to see whether he gets hooked by the adventure, what he catches, the sounds, the sights in his headlamp, or the annual miracle of those giant mayfly hatches.

Bob Scammell is an outdoors sportswriter from Alberta. A member of the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, he is the author of
Good Old Guys, Alibis, and Outright Lies
(Johnson Gorman Publishers, 1996). Last year, he received one of Canada’s Recreational Fisheries Awards.

Say that you’ve cast your peepers on a gorgeous gal, but she won’t give you the time of day. Or maybe you’ve got your heart set on a hunk who doesn’t seem to care two figs for you.

Join the club! Since ancient times, the lonely and the lovelorn have sought out potions to excite feelings of love (or, let’s face it, lust) in the objects of their affection. Many of these potions involve food that can be found in the market, in the garden, or even in the wild.

In the 15 th century, Sheikh Nefzawi suggested, in his book
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight,
that those looking for love should eat 20 almonds and 100 grains of pulverized pine tree heavily covered with honey just before going to bed. This would allegedly make a person more attractive.

No appetite for pulverized pine? The Roman scholar Galen suggested 100 pine nuts before bed—a suggestion that actually has some merit. Pine nuts contain lots of zinc, which some believe may turn the tame into tigers. Oysters are also rich in zinc. And they have been credited—even by romantic ancient Romans—with being the mollusk of choice for those looking for love.

Lots of herbs have reputations for helping love along. If you rub your skin with a little thyme, it’s said that you’re certain to attract a sweetheart. Once you’ve got that sweetheart, keep him or her devoted forever with a liberal sprinkling of lovage (on you, not him or her).

Trying to get that guy to pop the question? Sneak a little borage into his drink to give him the courage to ask. And if your sweetheart isn’t giving you enough attention, sprinkle a little chervil on his or her food to put a little pep into the proceedings.

If you’re trying to heat up a potential sweetheart, give him or her a cup of ginger tea. Ginger has long been touted for its aphrodisiac properties. It is warming and calming and stimulates the circulation—the perfect recipe for romance. Want more? Add a little honey to that tea. The Greek physician Hippocrates recognized honey for its ability to stimulate desire. Ever since, in cultures all around the world, honey has been both a symbol of, and a prescription for, love. In ancient Persia, newlyweds drank honey wine every day for the first month after they were married because it was believed to be an aphrodisiac. (This is a popular theory about the origin of the term “honeymoon.”)