Total Eclipse/ Does it effect the movements?

[John Bales]

I can give you my point of view on Musky Joe's question. I thought about this a lot. Mr. Perry said that he never saw any relationship of fish movements according to the position of the moon. Any solunar tables that are out there that make predictions on fish movements can be overshadowed by the local weather and water conditions at the time. The only way to know was to be out there when it happened. So I did. I have been fishing the lake that I live on several days in a row. The movements have been early and late with the evenings far better for the larger fish. Today I got on the water an hour before it started and fished one hour after it was over. During that time, I caught 5 northern pike and one 4lb bass. None of the northern pike were of any size. Deb got home and I knew we had a spoonplugging meeting and one of the guys was picking me up at my house at 6. I asked Deb if she wanted to go out and make a few passes and she said yes. We got out at 4:30 and made several passes on the best spots. Deb got a 36 incher at 5 pm and right after that, I had a good one on and it came off. Those two fish were far better than anything I had on during the darkest part of the day. So the bigger fish stuck to what has been going on for the last three days. One of my neighbors ran me down and handed me a pair of those glasses where I could look at it and not go blind. Very cool to see it at the exact moment that the moon was totally covering the sun. What a very eerie feeling it was. A different kind of light condition. There was one thing I did notice. Not long before the eclipse started, there were lots of birds flying and small birds were diving down and picking something off the surface of the water. When my neighbors came out they told me to shut off my motor and listen. I heard no signs of life what so ever. There were no birds in the air at all that I could see. It was a strange feeling like everything was just not there anymore. One of the guys said he noticed the same thing with the birds and animals without me mentioning it. Another guy said that if it was very cloudy, we would have felt the same thing if we didn't know there was a eclipse going on. I say no way. The light condition was very different than I have ever seen. When you are on the water, you see things change in the light conditions. This was different. There was no way I wasn't going to be out there today during that time that it was happening. I needed to know. John