I have several friends that use clickers, but there is always something about someone that needs to know whether they have caught 76 or 79 bass during a trip.  Who cares, now if they caught a 7.9 bass  we care, and pictures always follow.  A picture of a clicker with 79 showing, means nothing!  Just a comment of lots of bass caught is enough.  Anyone can click a clicker, or more often forget to click the clicker.  No one forgets to take a picture of a big bass!  

I keep track in my head when fishing.

 

I also keep track of "by-catches" like walleye or northern pike, especially.

 

When I muskie fish it's very easy to keep track of those because the number is almost always zero.

11 hours ago, Lottabass said:

You folks that keeo track of your catches, what method do you use?

If I catch one over 5, I weigh it and write it down on a note pad but never have recorded the total number of fish in a day.

Yesterday I caught a wad of 'em, no bigs, but a great day!  @Swamp Girl Katie, how do you keep track?  I don't have the brain power to remember numbers but it would be nice to know how many instead of just a guesstimate.

Bass Thumb is a sign of a true addict.

I usually keep track with a couple pieces of cord, tie a loose knot for every fish. Every five or ten tie a knot on the second. You can adjust the count to your needs.  No fuss, no muss. It can go any where with  ya, doesn’t need batteries, and won’t hurt it if it gets wet.
Military thing… from keeping track of distance, before gps. 
 

Keep a rough count in my head, lately it hasn't been to hard to keep up with. 

I do several things. 1, I take a picture of each fish when I have the phone handy. When I don't, I try to count. I lose count after about a dozen though. Sometimes, I just decide to go fishing and not count.

 

Last year I went a huge portion of the year without counting or taking pictures. I don't remember the catches nearly as clearly.

 

I combat bass thumb by body gripping some of the smaller ones.

I have been keeping fishing logs since 1991.

Be interesting to get up to heaven and ask the Lord how many bass I caught. Maybe he'll put me at the big boy table with @Swamp Girl.

I don’t keep track but I suppose I have OCD. I am a sports person and know the jersey numbers to many greats across many sports so when I catch #12, he/she is Cunningham. Say 23, that is Svoboda….i know, I know, that should be another greats number but hey, I love hockey over basketball. The goal is to get one over Gretzky, rarely happens!  
 

As for pictures. The first always gets a pic, documenting the day and then each larger one gets a pic. 

Ya know....just reading the title of this thread....it sounds like something you'd do while trying to go to sleep.

 

1 bass.....2 bass....3 bass.....

 

 

I keep a loose, rough count in my head, but overall don’t really care. Numbers are too subjective and a 6 fish day could be really solid in some fisheries, while in others, 20 is slow. I fish mostly from shore and am probably creeping up on 300 nice bass since late April, I could never keep a clicker or exact numbers because that points to ego imo, and I’m not interested in that. I take pics of fish I consider good sized and some that are just nice looking or great patterning or whatever reason I see fit. I love photography, and I LOVE fishin’

8 hours ago, Craig P said:

I don’t keep track but I suppose I have OCD. I am a sports person and know the jersey numbers to many greats across many sports so when I catch #12, he/she is Cunningham. Say 23, that is Svoboda….i know, I know, that should be another greats number but hey, I love hockey over basketball. The goal is to get one over Gretzky, rarely happens!  
 

As for pictures. The first always gets a pic, documenting the day and then each larger one gets a pic. 

It's easy to remember Cunningham's jersey number;  best looking legs in the WNBA.  This IS a Bass fishing forum, right?

On 8/10/2025 at 7:47 AM, JonB2 said:

I could never keep a clicker or exact numbers because that points to ego imo, and I’m not interested in that.

 

Oh, goodness. 

I got a memory like Al Gore’s lock box. I member fishing stuff real good and whatnot so I don’t need a clicker. Unless I spot a Game Warden. Thence I start doubting my world class brain power. 

13 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

Oh, goodness. 

Nah, all good. Sometimes I word thoughts incorrectly or don’t mean as worded

I count and record my fish to a yearly journal. When I catch a bass, or make a major move or change, or something memorable happens, I send myself a text message. That way everything has a time stamp and later when I'm writing the journal entry, I have a record to fall back on. After my entry I write the time stamps for each catch in the journal as well. This method works well until you drop your phone in the lake (twice now for me 😖).

 

I'm the only person who cares about my journal but I picture someday when I'm gone it might mean quite a bit to one of my kids. It also comes in handy to spot patterns. This is year four of keeping track for me and every bass over 12" is there. 

 

 

I keep track  in my head still. I can remember my top 10 biggest in my life and what I caught them on . Also have caught 79 bass over 4 pounds in my lake since 2007. I don’t keep track of all the fish caught elsewhere, unless they break into the top 10. But I do it all from memory…

I’ve kept notes on my phone for every trip since 2013.  If I fished lakes, I would likely keep some sort of record, but I believe it almost essential for fishing rivers.  A river can change almost day to day.  Features that exist at one depth can disappear or become more pronounced at a different depth.  Eddies grow, shrink or disappear.  Currents may expand or become more concentrated.  I’ve discovered structure at lower depths that I never knew existed, and these became prime targets on later trips.  Keeping track of catches, along with depth, water temps, water clarity and the weather has helped me discover a few patterns that have proven to me to be fairly repeatable.  So much so, in fact, that I have caught 3 PBs in essentially the same spot several weeks apart, and two of them using the same bait.
I don’t consider the total number I catch as being terribly important.  I’m sure there has probably been times when I really caught only 11 when I thought it was 13, or I really caught 13 when I thought it was 11.  But what is certain is that I know where I caught the special ones, and what the conditions were when I caught them.  And when the conditions are the same, I make sure I target those spots again, and again, and again.

I go by the memory on my digital scale, and write it down when I get home.

10 hours ago, OldManLure said:

But what is certain is that I know where I caught the special ones, and what the conditions were when I caught them.  And when the conditions are the same, I make sure I target those spots again, and again, and again.

 

I have a good memory too for the big girls. I could paddle you around my ponds and tick off all the places I caught the biggest bass. I could tell you the times of day and what lures I used too. 

 

12 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

Also have caught 79 bass over 4 pounds in my lake since 2007.

 

Mike, we're the same. Four-pounders and up are the special bass for me too.

One of the best things I ever did for my fishing was to keep a log...and yes, count fish.

Not so I could post an e-brag on social media about how many fish I caught, but to tell me what worked and what didn't.

For the past 25 or so years, I've kept a very loose log and it's helped me immensely.

 

Date, lake name, weather, water temp.

Areas of the lake I fished, what I used and how many I caught.

 

This does so much for your fishing. It not only tells you what worked but also what didn't; you also start to learn seasonal areas, habits, baits etc...

So then, I would look at this log before every trip (past 3,4,7 years of the same date) and I could put together a pattern before even getting to the water. If, in the past 7 trips out on a certain date, you can expect the water temp to be the same, and I show I did well, there's a good chance of repeating that again.

DISCLAIMER:  I know some will say, "Never fish history"...while that can be true, you also need to take that with some salt. True, just because I wacked em on a certain flat one fall, doesn't mean they will always be there. But, if I've done well with certain baits, at a certain water temp consistantly for the past 9 years out...guess what I'm tying on the night before?

 

**Steps off soapbox**

 

 I keep track by using a click counter on the water, making a video and writing up a report that I post here. I can then go back and check my reports and videos from previous years before venturing out. 

I've used a clicker in the past. This year, I'm in a fun CPR competition to catch, (measure), photo, release 2025 bass for the year 2025. So far this year, I'm at 1,363 that I've managed to catch, measure, photo, and release. There's been quite a few more that I've caught and then didn't get the rest done before they flopped back in the water. There's also been a pretty fair number that didn't meet my minimum length requirement of 8". I'd guess I'm probably close to 1,500 bass caught on the year. My biggest 5 so far are 23.50, 23.25, 23.00, 22.25, and 22.00. All 5 of those were from the same week of fishing in Texas this past spring. Our Kansas bass just can't compare to those monsters. 

8 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I have a good memory too for the big girls. I could paddle you around my ponds and tick off all the places I caught the biggest bass. I could tell you the times of day and what lures I used too. 

Isn’t it fascinating how that works.

1 hour ago, OldManLure said:

Isn’t it fascinating how that works.

 

Our excitement cements the memories.