Best Hours For Night Fishing?

[BassThumb]

What time do you typically go out night fishing when the heat and humidity are oppressive? I don't night fish very often, but when I do, it's usually from about 7 PM until 1 AM so I can fish the dusk hours as well as a few hours of darkness. Does anybody fish the early AM hours? A trip from 2-7 AM for example.

[1234567]

When I night fish, I go out anywhere from 9pm to 6am. To be honest, I have had nights when the bite was good right at dark, sometimes right before light in the morning and sometimes anywhere in between. I guess in short, it's always a different time they start biting every time I go out! I get my most bites when they aren't very active dragging soft plastics along the bottom very slowly opposed to topwater or cranks.

[Catt]

I generally fish from about an hour before sun set until an hour after sun rise

Some nights they bite all night, some nights they bite after sun set, & some nights they bite before sun rise. I’ve kept records for many years and have not noticed a distinct advantage one way or another.

[GruntVet]

I use the universal 10pm - until the old lady starts blowing up my phone. Here in Ohio, for me the bites fade around 6pm and lights back up around 10pm. I use this method for bigger bodies of water (lakes ect). I read in some magazine some time ago, that those hours between early dusk to dark are times that the bass adjust to the lighting. Sounds like crap to me but hey I didnt write the article and Im sure it's hardly universal.

Whatever it is, be safe if your takin the boat out!

[WRB]

It's a good thing that bass can't read.

Fishing the transition from light to dark, dark to light is usually good, the bass are more active.

Like day time, the night bite has peake periods that differ and very hard to predict without being on the water.

Tom

[BassThumb]

Thanks for the replies. I had a good bite last night from sundown until midnight, after that, not so much.

[RoLo]

Fishing the transition from light to dark, dark to light is usually good, the bass are more active.

Tom

Yes and No.

Thanks to the intuitive master plan of Mother Nature, the eyes of game fish adjust more rapidly to light changes

than the eyes of baitfish. Bass instinctively exploit their visual advantage by stepping up their feeding

during dawn and dusk, which have come to be known as the Magic Hours.

Based on the weight of the evidence though, a bass ultimately loses this visual advantage as it ages.

In my view, this helps to explain why such an unusually high percentage of record-class and world-class game fish

have been taken during "midday hours". As an old bass loses its visual advantage over prey fish.

it must rely more-and-more on the visibility provided by full sunlight. This is only conjecture on my part,

but I believe that on balance, twilight is best for numbers of bass, while full sunlight is best for trophies.

Roger

[WRB]

Each to his or her own beliefs.

My experience doesn't support the bright sun light theory that bass see better and are caught more often during mid day.

Trophy bass are caught often during the spawning by sight anglers, not because the big girls are feeding or on live bait because big bass can see the difference.

Low light conditions; rain, heavy cloud cover, dawn, dusk, darkness of night, help mask the fact that lures tied on line are not real prey.

Dusk, the time when the sun is setting, brings out insects, smaller fish start actively feeding and the whole preditor prey cycle ramps up.

Dawn is different, everything has settling down and feeding activity for big bass is less predictable; they hunt for prey moving into or leaving shelter areas.

Anyway, that has been my experience; very acive dusk bites, less predictable dawn bites and a lot of fishing in between the setting and raising of the sun.

Tom

[TerryR]

In my experience, I have done well from about an hour before sunset until dusk, then it seems to slow down until about midnight , then it picks back up until 3 or 4.