I have seen a couple posts about useing fishing logs, and i wanted to know what exactly do they do? and are they worth the time to fill out and keep track of?

They serve a variety of purposes... but you can only get out of them, what you put in them.  I kept them for years when I lived in East Tx.  It's really helpful to be able to go back and look at seasonal patterns, baits etc.  If nothing else, you will have a written record of conditions vs what worked.  So on one of those hot blue bird days you can see what has worked in the past under the same conditions.  

Some people put a ton of info there, I used to put the date, weather conditions, baits that worked and general info on good fish. (depth, presentation, cover/structure, location)  Logs are most helpful if you fish the same lake or lakes all the time...  if you fish all over, the best you can do is general seasonal patterns.

You really need to keep them for a full year before they help a lot.  Over, say a long summer, they are good but in yr 2 they are better and every year after they are that much better.  Somebody had a searchable program for the computer that would be nice.

If you spend half the year pursuing fish for pleasure or money, both.

A log can be anything useful to that days failure or success.  Date, time, place, conditions like wind direction and speed, barometer steady, failing, or rising, water clarity, baits used, fish caught, size of catch, catch rates,

Lake level, dam gates open, closed, weather above, cloudy, sunny, storms.

Basically, any piece of the puzzle that might help you when you come back, or same conditions at another lake you haven't been to that might offer some insight on.

I try to remember trolling motor speeds, on my lowest setting, we caught 10 on that run along the shallow bank, while another time yeilded only two bass, but trolling motor was set higher, thus maybe my trolling motor was to loud in the shallows that time.

How was your tackle rigged?   8lb test, 15 lb?  1/4 oz rattle trap or 1/2oz?  I caught 35 on a 1/4oz trap bite, but only 6 keepers,  I caught 16 on 1/2oz, 9 are keepers.

Its unlimited the notes you can keep.   Boat traffic that day vs pleasure craft.   Last time I shut down 100 yds away before entering my target area and had these results as opposed to shutting the boat down at 50 yards the next time.

Hope this helps.

Here's the original log that everyone copies these days:

http://bassresource.com/fish/fishinglog3.gif

This is actually a log my buddy and I created back in '89.  I just created this version years ago to share with y'all.  Funny how similar versions popped up all over the Web shortly after I posted it.   :

What the fishing world, especially the bass fishing part, needs now is BLOGS not Logs, which I think are over-rated as a fish catching tool.

BP