I am thinking about keeping a fishing journal this year. If you keep one, what information do you record? Do you do it on the water or after you get home? Do you find it easy to stay on top of or is it hard to remember to do it? 

I am a bit OCD.

I use excell and have since 1998.  I open the file before I go and enter everything that I can prior to the trip.  As soon as I get home and put the boat away I open the current file and finish.

 

 I record the date, the launch site, whose boat we used, fishing time, air temp range, water temp range, moon phase, species of fish by number, best producing bait, best color, average depth of fish then notes of anything memorable.  There may be some other things but that is what I can recall right now.

 

 I just finished looking through old records trying to decide where to go next and what might be working.

Paper log since the 1990's.

Here is the top 1/3.

Wow, I admire the dedication to such detailed logs @Jig Man and @DaubsNU1. Have you all audited these to understand trends?

 

To the OP - I keep a small 3x5 notebook and a pen with me. I often have two kids in tow so I need it to be easy to access. I log the date, rough temp, where we are, species, length, weight, and lure. 

This is the log I created in 1991, and still use:

https://www.bassresource.com/fish/fishing_log.html

 

I kept a journal for YEARS ~ 

For both day & night bass fishing.

It was fun to keep it up and then go back and re-read what happened, where, when & how.

My final analysis on fishing journals is that they can be helpful

especially if & when a basshead is learning how to fish or learning new water. 

Beyond that, I never felt like I really gained any type of  repeatable advantage from doing it.

That said, I still document most all of my fishing but it's in video form.

Actually tells me everything I need to know

and quite a bit more than I was able to capture in a journal..

YMMV

A-Jay

https://www.youtube.com/@AjLynn45thParallelFishing

 

With the excel file I can use filters and have it show specifics and trends.

I'm another one that uses an Excel spreadsheet.  Over the years I've added and removed different fields. 

Some of the columns include Trip number, Date, Day of Week, Location, Bank or Boat, Weather, Cover, Structure, Amount Caught, Species, Bait, Color, Trailer, and Type of rig.

Lots of great information here! Thanks!