Night fishing safety / other tips...

[StrictlyBiznuss]

Ok, so there's a tournament coming up at the end of the month over here in UT that's supposed to be a "night" tournament...4pm-11pm. Now, my night fishing experience is very limited. And by limited I mean, I night fished for catfish a few times as a kid, and then I've fished maybe twice before for bass for about an hour after it got dark...just cause I wasn't ready to call it a day yet. haha. And all of those times have been from shore. I'm looking for any tips that you guys can give me, but I am probably more so looking for things that I can do to stay safe out on the water while night fishing. As I would imagine that it's a bit more risky with the low visibility and such. I'd like any tips you've got concerning staying safe while night fishing, or tips that are going to help me win this tournament. Now, the lake is dominated by smallmouth bass, but there are the few occasional good sized largies to be found. Thanks guys!

[cleb19]

First of all night Fishing is a Ball and there is no better time of the year to night fish what so ever, the first thing you should do is invest in a black light they help so much when fishing on the bottom with mono line it looks like Rope second dress properly and always bring some over clothes you can throw over you normal clothes never know what the weather is going to do, and then fish with somebody(partner) just to be safe have fun Im sure there are other things you can do also and some will chime in you will catch a bunch

cleb

[dog]

You will love it, when the sun goes down the bite turns on. Just dont forget your bug spray. Home depot and Wal-Mart both have a head light that you put on and strap it to your hat., it works beter than the ones that clip on to the bill of your hat. There only 14.00 and that will be the best 14.00 you ever spent, trust me. If you use florecent blue line and a black light it will help see bites and dont worry about spooking the fish I have spent the last three weeks fishing at night and it will not scare them. Of all the equipment I use, the adjustable head lamp is by far the best,. You can adjust it down to tie lures then up to see whare you are casting, whare you look the light will be in the same direction. Good luck on your tournement.

[JRock]

The less light you use the better. Your eyes will become conditioned to the low light conditions after about twenty minutes. I usually keep only a small light handy for tying knots and such but try not to use any light at all while fishing. I get a kick out of those guys who have their boats lit up like christmas trees, black lights and such. They usually have the hardest time seeing the bank because of all their lights which are actually counter productive.
I do suggest that you have a spot light for navigating and keep your speeds to a minimum.

[snapitoff2002]

Hey! Where is this Night tournament at??? I'm heading over to Wyoming and Utah for work the next 3 months... I'll be in the northwestern part of Utah. Are you fishing Flaming Gorge? I heard Jordanelle is pretty good, but I wasn't going to bring any of my rods Anyhow, I'd love to hook up with someone who knows the local scoop on the smallmouths out there. Night tournaments are great... but the most important part of it is knowing your surroundings in the daytime so you can relate at night.

Josh

[bassindon69]

Just using you running lights on will be ok too. So that you don't go out and spend a bunch of money on stuff. I fish all the time with running lights on. It does not hurt the fishing. We have done just fine in night tourneys with them on. Take a piece of black tape and just cover the a part of the back running light so it does not blind the guy in the back. We have won plenty with out a black light.
Cover water till you find fish. All baits that work in the day will work at night. You can get away with stronger lb test line also. The head light is a must. Make sure you have a good spot light also.

Best of luck!

Don.

[Larry Hemphill]

I don't know what type of lake you are fishing, but, if you don't have an experienced night guy with you - two rules. Don't fish areas that you are NOT familiar with, and - be aware of the wind forcast if it is a big lake. That could cause BIG problems!! All the light info from previous posters is excellent. General rules for night baits - thick and bulky!! A skinny 10 inch worm is not as good as a thick bodied 10" worm such as a Power worm or a thick gator worm. Brush hogs are great night baits - bulky and easy to inhale. Make sure you have a big enough hook for these baits - a 4/0 or 5/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook. Have fun!

[The Lone Angler]

I agree with everything said so far. On an unpopulated lake, finding your next spot can be an iffy proposition at best. Find an area that you have confidence in and get to that area before dark. Finding spots in the dark of the moon can be difficult if not impossible. Larry's wind advice is sound as well. If your best area has big wind blowing into it and becomes unfishable, have a back up area that is protected that you can find in the dark.

Hope this helps,

Phil

[LeroyH]

...if using a 1,000,000,000,000 candle powered spot light Please don't blind the other boaters It sucks to hear someone coming, look over, and then spend the next 10 minutes repairing my retna's from sun damage...

[MikeD]

... the first thing you should do is invest in a black light they help so much when fishing on the bottom with mono line it looks like Rope ...

just adding to this topic of black lights to help see the line, I like tinkering with little projects and at the time I was fishing a lot of night tourneys so I modified a Ray-o-vac headlamp that I got from WalMart for about $12 to include UV/Blacklight LED's . The stock rayovac unit looks like this:



I wrote this "mod" up over at candlepowerforums.com many moons ago, and dug it out this morning, lots of good headlamp modification info over there (other wild stuff too like using landing lights from airplanes in handheld spotlight, highly modified flashlights, etc - some cool stuff to poke thru):

Code: Select all

I do some night lake fishing here in NorCal, the need to have a multifunction lite with me has provided the inspiration for putting together a rayovac 3-in-1 mod, hope this helps somebody else since I could find nothing like this online anywhere.

the lamp has:
- 2 ultraviolet LEDs to help illuminate most fishing line. The UV makes the line look like lime green rope as it comes off the reel and heads into the water. "They say" that it's not visible by fish, and I like having the line visible as it goes into the water.
- 1 red LED for in-boat night viewing, keeps your night vision intact as you dig thru your tackle box

parts list:

1 rayovac 3-in-1 lamp, $13 from walmart. plenty of info/pics of them here on the site so I won't dup here, use the search function for more info on the lamp
2 5mm ultraviolet LED's, pn 5-UV06034, cost is $1.20 from LSDiode (http://www.lsdiodes.com/5mm/)
1 pack (qty 5) resistors, 10 ohm, $0.25 from LSDiode (http://www.lsdiodes.com/resistors/)

Its pretty simple - what you are going to do is to take the original LED layout at the bottom of the headlamp with 2 reds and 1 white and change them up - replace the red bulbs with the new UV LED's and then take one of the red LED's that you just pulled and use it in place of the white LED (the white LED is useless for night fishing). you end up throwing away one red and one white LED.

instructions:

1 - unscrew the spotlight bezel from the headlamp and pull the 3 screws to open the case
2 - unsolder the 2 red LEDs and the 1 white LED from the PCB
3 - unsolder the resistors, hang on to a 10 ohm and a 39 ohm resistor, you'll use them later on

note: I've had 2 of these headlamps, 1 had carbon film resistors (the classic kind) and the other one had surface mount resistors. the resistance values were the same on both.

note: that I had to unsolder and remove the power input assy from the PCB to get to the last light. in hindsight I would have left that last red LED that has its leads hidden under the power input assy on the PCB and juggled the input power to it.

the following assumes that you've pulled all 3 LEDs, if not read thru the rest and see the note below regarding the "alternate resistor wiring" of the resistors if you have left the red LED in place as mentioned above

4 - install the UV LED's in place of the red LEDs
5 - install one of the old red LED's into the middle position
6 - put a 10 ohm resistor on each of the UV LED input power circuits
7 - use the 39 ohm resisitor you saved in the red LED input power circuit

that completes the LED circuit and gives you a 2 UV on power setting 1, 1 red at power setting 2 and the original krypton bulb as the spotlight

alternate resistor wiring:
if you have left a red LED under the input power assy its pretty simple to wire it up
1 - on the resistor area, run a 39 ohm resistor between the power side of R2 to the bottom side of R1
2 - run a 10 ohm resistor between R1 power side (top) and R2 LED side (bottom)
you'll end up with an X between the R1 and R2 areas

enjoy

if you are handy with a soldering iron this is an easy modification to do and you end up with the best of all worlds, UV for helping you see mono line (won't illuminate most braid or flouro - just mono) and red for keeping your night vision as well as the white spotlight that uses the same bulb as the small maglite flashlight with about the same power output.

I can shoot some pics of the inside of mine if this info is of interest to anybody.

[Fish Chris]

Hey those headlights are an ABSOLUTE neccessity for night fishing.... not that you should keep them turned on constantly, but they are great for when you are tying on a lure, or landing a fish, and need both hands free.

BTW, they now have super ultra-light models which use the LED's and the tiny, flat , hearing aid style batteries. Still really bright, but so light you barely feel the weight on your hat, plus some of thyem will burn for like 150 hours on one or two of those tiny batteries !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And as far as safety, be really careful of lures flying back at you, especially with stretchy mono filament, which will load up energy and can slingshot a lure back at you with "blinding" force !

Even with braid, when I hook a fish, and am fighting it in, I'm always squinting, and ready to look away in a split second if anything pops loose.

Peace,
Fish

[Kevin Evans - Kap]

Good head lamp, extra batteries/flashlight. and extra clothes. Try to avoid baits with treble hooks. Throw pararell to the bank. use beads w/ worm weights. Go big.... Keep your boat tackle to a minumum. Prepare your rods before you get on the water. And like everyone said, Know the water you will be fishing at night, Underwater obstructions..etc.. Have a map of the lake and put a game plan together.
Good luck and be safe...

Kap

[badbass25]

hey mike...
post some pics of your mods i have the same head lamp already and it would save me some money on buying a blacklight head lamp...
Thanks

[D.B.COOPER]

Just a quick night story. We were in Horse Shoe(Clear Lake) during the summer last year. Pitch black out. Vasco, myself, and Lyle. Lyle was new to this night stuff. When we(Vasco and myself) were leaving State Park campgrounds to go to Horseshoe, at the last second Lyle's wife asked if we would take him out. Sure, no problem. We should have have kept going. Har. So we get over to Horseshoe and were teaching Lyle what to do, but he's not really getting it. I kept saying to myself something's not right here. About 5 minutes later we hear a crash in the back of the boat and turn on our lights and here's Lyle on the floor on top of my rods. Two rods broken. Myself and Vasco just looked at each other and said what the hell is going on. He apologizes and said he lost his balance. Ok, no problem. We continue fishing and it's pitch black out and very quiet. Lyle's not saying a peep back there. Vasco get's tangled up on the bank and says he's going in to get his lure. No problem. We move right in to the bank and Vasco's untangling his lure and out of the corner of my eye I see Lyle opening up his bail to get ready to cast. I tapped Vasco and said look. What the !@#$ is going on here. We're right up on the bank. Lyle rears back and make a cast right into the bushes. Crash!!! Is this for real? We could not stop laughing. It was unbelievable. Then we knew he was under the influence of something. There was no hope of getting his lure back. Har. We took him back to camp and dumped him off. It's turns out he had been drinking white wine all day and the wife wanted to get rid of him, but failed to tell us he was hammered. Smart wife. I think when it got pitch black out the wine just hit him all at once and he got the spins. Moral of the story, while although this was a funny night for us, ALCOHOL, nighttime, and fishing do not go together. We were lucky he didn't go overboard. You need to be on full alert at nighttime and well rested. Can't afford to make mistakes. D.B.COOPER

[Steve]

My only suggestion is that you make sure your boat is well organized, and you only have the gear you need, and all your gear is stored and out of the way. You dont need a cluttered boat when fishing at night. This is how rods break and people trip and fall in the water. Headlamp is mandatory as is a ladder to be able to get back in the boat if you fall out.

Being familar with safe navigation routes is very important too. Nightime is not the time to be trying new routes across the water.

[Levy]

And as far as safety, be really careful of lures flying back at you, especially with stretchy mono filament, which will load up energy and can slingshot a lure back at you with "blinding" force !

Even with braid, when I hook a fish, and am fighting it in, I'm always squinting, and ready to look away in a split second if anything pops loose.

My buddy got hit right between the eyes with a jig a few weeks back. Needless to say he immediately went out and bought clear safety glasses for night fishing. I will no longer ever throw a lure in the water without some sort of eye protection.

Good Luck
Jon Levenson

[Mr B]

Thank for the laughs D.B. And god job getting 2nd in the Clear Lake Nigt Tourney a couple of week ago.

Mr B

[Fish Chris]

Thank God he didn't lose an eye ! Wearing eye protection at night sounds like a very good idea to me !

(Of course so does wearing a life jacket at all times when on a boat, running or not > which I always do < but I have noticed that I'm in a very small minority)

But hey anyway, I'm going to be throwing, big, top water lures with two or three surgical sharp 2/0 Owner ST 36's swinging from them.... at night ! Now think about how often the fish miss, when you swing for the fences, setting the hook !

Might pick up some safety glasses today.

Thank you Levy,
Fish

[Joe W.]

... the first thing you should do is invest in a black light they help so much when fishing on the bottom with mono line it looks like Rope ...

just adding to this topic of black lights to help see the line, I like tinkering with little projects and at the time I was fishing a lot of night tourneys so I modified a Ray-o-vac headlamp that I got from WalMart for about $12 to include UV/Blacklight LED's . The stock rayovac unit looks like this:



I wrote this "mod" up over at candlepowerforums.com many moons ago, and dug it out this morning, lots of good headlamp modification info over there (other wild stuff too like using landing lights from airplanes in handheld spotlight, highly modified flashlights, etc - some cool stuff to poke thru):

Code: Select all

I do some night lake fishing here in NorCal, the need to have a multifunction lite with me has provided the inspiration for putting together a rayovac 3-in-1 mod, hope this helps somebody else since I could find nothing like this online anywhere.

the lamp has:
- 2 ultraviolet LEDs to help illuminate most fishing line. The UV makes the line look like lime green rope as it comes off the reel and heads into the water. "They say" that it's not visible by fish, and I like having the line visible as it goes into the water.
- 1 red LED for in-boat night viewing, keeps your night vision intact as you dig thru your tackle box

parts list:

1 rayovac 3-in-1 lamp, $13 from walmart. plenty of info/pics of them here on the site so I won't dup here, use the search function for more info on the lamp
2 5mm ultraviolet LED's, pn 5-UV06034, cost is $1.20 from LSDiode (http://www.lsdiodes.com/5mm/)
1 pack (qty 5) resistors, 10 ohm, $0.25 from LSDiode (http://www.lsdiodes.com/resistors/)

Its pretty simple - what you are going to do is to take the original LED layout at the bottom of the headlamp with 2 reds and 1 white and change them up - replace the red bulbs with the new UV LED's and then take one of the red LED's that you just pulled and use it in place of the white LED (the white LED is useless for night fishing). you end up throwing away one red and one white LED.

instructions:

1 - unscrew the spotlight bezel from the headlamp and pull the 3 screws to open the case
2 - unsolder the 2 red LEDs and the 1 white LED from the PCB
3 - unsolder the resistors, hang on to a 10 ohm and a 39 ohm resistor, you'll use them later on

note: I've had 2 of these headlamps, 1 had carbon film resistors (the classic kind) and the other one had surface mount resistors. the resistance values were the same on both.

note: that I had to unsolder and remove the power input assy from the PCB to get to the last light. in hindsight I would have left that last red LED that has its leads hidden under the power input assy on the PCB and juggled the input power to it.

the following assumes that you've pulled all 3 LEDs, if not read thru the rest and see the note below regarding the "alternate resistor wiring" of the resistors if you have left the red LED in place as mentioned above

4 - install the UV LED's in place of the red LEDs
5 - install one of the old red LED's into the middle position
6 - put a 10 ohm resistor on each of the UV LED input power circuits
7 - use the 39 ohm resisitor you saved in the red LED input power circuit

that completes the LED circuit and gives you a 2 UV on power setting 1, 1 red at power setting 2 and the original krypton bulb as the spotlight

alternate resistor wiring:
if you have left a red LED under the input power assy its pretty simple to wire it up
1 - on the resistor area, run a 39 ohm resistor between the power side of R2 to the bottom side of R1
2 - run a 10 ohm resistor between R1 power side (top) and R2 LED side (bottom)
you'll end up with an X between the R1 and R2 areas

enjoy

if you are handy with a soldering iron this is an easy modification to do and you end up with the best of all worlds, UV for helping you see mono line (won't illuminate most braid or flouro - just mono) and red for keeping your night vision as well as the white spotlight that uses the same bulb as the small maglite flashlight with about the same power output.

I can shoot some pics of the inside of mine if this info is of interest to anybody.

I got a LED headlamp at outdoor world that can switch from white light to black light or a combination of black and white light. I believe it was on sale for 6 bucks.

Best 6 bucks I ever spent. I live this thing for night fishing.

[Levy]

(Of course so does wearing a life jacket at all times when on a boat, running or not > which I always do < but I have noticed that I'm in a very small minority)
Thank you Levy,
Fish

No Problem FC. I am with you on the lifejacket thing as well. Mine only comes off when i need to remove or add a layer or 2 of clothing then it goes right back on. It amazes me everytime when i see a 60 - 70 MPH boat go by and nobody has a lifejacket on and I imagine that if they are not wearing a lifejacket that they don't have the kill swith connected to them either.

I only have a 60HP tracker that has a top speed of 35 MPH but I say why risk it. Life is too short to not take control of things we can avoid... In this case it is not even inconvienent to wear the jacket or connect the kill switch.

Jon Levenson

[MikeD]

hey mike...
post some pics of your mods i have the same head lamp already and it would save me some money on buying a blacklight head lamp...

info sent via PM, the images I shot of my headlamp are overkill in size to post here. if anybody else wants a PM with the info please let me know. it costs $3.70 for the parts (shipping included) to turn the Ray-o-vac headlamp above into an awesome black light headlamp.