Nico has been posting a lot of the stuff from our database collected over the past 9 years or so. I put hundreds of hours in to that deal, and pored over it ad nauseum along the way trying to derive some useful information. There's over 500 bass over 5lbs logged in the database from 15 or so different lakes. It's good data, enough to offer strong statistical significance.

There's no shortage of interesting patterns that emerge as you paw through, as we've seen in this week's posts. I've often thought of doing some multiple linear regressions to see which combinations of variables offer the best predictions. It's easy to do in Excel but it might be a bit of a mind bender trying to apply things in real world situations.

If I were a guide or a professional angler who was on the water hundreds of days per year I would study it even more and try to really fine tune my fishing to anticipate success. There could be real opportunities to take what you learn from logs and apply it in a meaningful way.

As it is I'm a weekend warrior. I'm married and like to keep it that way. I work 9-6 and get 3 weeks of vacation. I own a house now and that's a lot of work on top of the day to day. The fishing days choose me more often than not. I don't choose them.

So when the day for fishing comes over the past few years, I find myself more focused on season and condition. Success for me comes when the strategy matches the day. For example if it's sunny and post front, I may fish deeper or slower. Light level may cause me to change lure color. Wind may cause me to change lure depth or speed of retrieve.

Seldom do I have the luxury of saying aha, this is the best moon phase so I will go and fish. It has happened, and I have had good days doing that, but even then local condition can override otherwise favorable factors. It's a hard game to chase. It's one that requires a lot of time.

As a side note, Matt Servant made a point in an earlier post about how he feels that moon phase may have more effect on large bodies of water. My feeling is the opposite. I think that larger bodies of water have more conditions that can negate moon phase. Things like water level, current, clarity, and temperature can change so drastically on big bodies of water like the delta and clear lake - where on a smaller lake they may not change much at all.

There are a few small lakes that I fish that have fairly constant condition in terms of water level, clarity and temperature. Those are the lakes where I see moon phase having the most effect. But even then it is no sure thing in the face of seasonality, wind, and weather pattern. Matt - I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about not finding reliable trends around moon phase in your logs.

This week I've been reading a book called "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell (he wrote "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" which are good ones as well). In the book he talks about how studies of professional athletes, musicians and similar disciplines have shown that the most successful in their fields typically practice a minimum of 10,000 hours before becoming a true master or expert.

When I think about the best anglers in fishing, it seems likely that the 10,000 number is a valid one. That's 1250 days, and we can be assured that the Kevin Van Dams of the world have done it. Meanwhile, I might be at 6,000 lifetime (roughly), though only 3,000 in bass fishing at the most. I'm 30 years old.

To me that signals a long ways to go. Perhaps a lifetime. Which is a fun thing to think about :) but daunting. Which brings the thought back around to the beginning which is that taking logs of your fishing may take you to a certain point, but by the time you are truly an expert at 10,000 hours - most everything will be internalized and require no more conscious thought.

So should we take logs at all, or just fish more? I don't know the answer to that one.