Night fishing can be an exhilarating experience. It’s a fun activity full of mystery and expectation. When will something take the bait? What will it be? Will I overcome it, or will it overcome me? If you hook something big, you hope it’s a trophy fish. But you’re never really sure. You don’t know what’s down there, and you won’t know for certain until you reel it up from the depths and see it break the surface. That’s the mystery part, the mystery of the night that draws a hard-boiled fraternity of anglers to this witching-hour sport. Link ot their site….
Exciting? Definitely. Memorable? Always. Night fishing is a pursuit like no other.
You can catch many fish during daylight hours. When angling for certain species, however, or during certain times of year, the odds for success often improve if you fish between dusk and dawn. Fish often work the graveyard shift, and fishermen should, too.
If you do go night fishing, you’ll need lights — not just lights to see by, but specialty lights that draw sportfish close to your boat. The latter work by attracting tiny animals called zooplankton, which attract baitfish such as shad, herring and minnows, which in turn attract predator fish such as bass, crappie, walleye, redfish, speckled trout and other species. Sportfish gather near or in the circle of light to feed. The angler drops in a bait or lure to catch them.
Three primary types of specialty lights — floating fishing lights, submersible fishing lights and black lights — are used for night fishing, each of which is discussed below. Floating and submersible lights are used to attract fish and can be used separately or in combination. Combinations — a pair of floating lights positioned above two submersible lights, for example — tend to be more versatile, lighting multiple levels of the water column to attract fish no matter where they are, while also providing more above-the-water lighting for tying knots, hooking bait and unhooking fish. Black lights are used primarily to illuminate fishing line, allowing the angler to determine what’s happening below by seeing, rather than just feeling, line movement.
Floating Lights
Early fishermen often used torches to illuminate the water where they sometimes fished at night. Lanterns also have been used for decades, including the veritable Coleman lantern, a mainstay among many night fishermen even now. Read on …..
.