Geeking out on Fish Count Spreadsheets

I started tracking my success or lack thereof in Excel last year and continued this year. Due to generous input from NCKA members and others, Moo, Diehard and TLA videos, as well as some experimenting and exploring on my own, I improved my catches quite a bit, with nearly 250 fish caught this year.
My rules are semi-flexible as I don't count croakers, smelt or bait, except mackerel - which I like to eat. I don't count rock crab, unless I'm eating it. I also count undersized but desirable fish as not skunking. So this year I have an 80% success ratio with those metrics but a 63% ratio if I only count legal/desirable fish.
This spreadsheet shows that Berry and Alameda have been bad to me this year.

Overall this year has been my best fishing year ever, with 3 lingcod over 30", 2 halibut over 30", a rockfish over 20", and a 25" cutthroat.
All of this despite the 10% to 20% Mabel-the-German-Shorthaired-Pointer-in-your-face handicap.

I'm not yet a threat to AOTY leaders but I feel like I'm pretty solid journeyman level - except for salmon.

I think the increase in fishing days and obsession has had a correlating negative effect on my business income. But perhaps "correlation does not mean causation". One can only hope. I may have to cut back a bit next year. (on business or fishing? - left intentionally vague)
Glean what you can from the info attached and Happy Holidays.

Hi Joe

That is a great summary of your fishing journey.
I hope I get to fish often as you do soon.  Looking forward to fishing with you again next year.
Thank you for the sticker.  I  placed on my new 2022 Outback.

Paul

The details are very entertaining.  "dog broke rod" 

As a fellow "numbers guy" I love the spreadsheet!!   That's on my to-do list for 2023 as well. I'm going to start tracking the correlation between tides and fish counts as well,. particularly for halibut and salmon.

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Joe that is a very cool way to keep track! Hopefully you have a private record of locations, depths, water temp, water color, lure used, moon phase, tide movement. Or not. Sometimes I overthink stuff! 

Ha! I thought i was the only geek here. I track all of my catches and progress against goals (e.g. Catch 20 salmon - didn't happen). I have WAY too much time on my hands. Looking forward to fishing together soon, Joe!

Can this be organized madness? 

It would be nice if someone developed an App to log fishing, including location, species, size, date, time, tide, water depth, weather, swell, wind....
I think it is very doable with ESRI ArcGIS Survey123 software.  You can display records by Dashboard...

Paul

Joe that is a very cool way to keep track! Hopefully you have a private record of locations, depths, water temp, water color, lure used, moon phase, tide movement. Or not. Sometimes I overthink stuff! 

You forgot sunspots activity, what you ate for breakfast, and the color of your underwear (both pre- and post-shark sighting).

2022 was an epic year. Thanks for sharing. I do something similar, I keep more of a journal to remember things.

Pretty cool record-keeping.  Thanks for putting it out.  Congratulations on having a good 2022!   I have not tried it, but I hear that the Fishbrain app keeps track of much of the stuff that some of the others have mentioned.

I'm jealous about the number of trips you made. I take a picture of my catch every trip so I know what I caught and I record my tracks on Gaia GPS, but I haven't really examined it closely to look for useful trends.

Nice work, Joe.  The obsession is real!   

Your post made me think, "I should do that", but then I realized that I haven't done it in many years other than in my notebook.

Here's one from 14 years ago that I found by searching "compilation".  Might try "journal" next.

Cheers!

http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=11227.msg102536#msg102536

Nice job Joe. You left out the Amador skunk fest. Thats when you lost your camera.