I'm sure this has been discussed plenty of times, but I can't see any recent threads. I'm gutted not to be on the bank tonight with the harvest moon! It's always one I seem to have done well on when I've managed to get out in the past. Last time was two years ago and managed the biggest common in the lake at the time.

Do you think a full moon is better than a new moon? Or do neither bother you enough to care?

I have always preferred a darker sky, and the smaller moon the better.

In reply to Post #2
Yeah that's interesting as I always used to think this! Until I caught that common and it clouded my judgement. It was a strange night where I almost knew I was going to have a bigun! 😂

I've alway done well 14 days either side of a "Full Moon"

In reply to Post #3
I have generally noticed that very bright moons seem to kill the activity, but obviously there is always a chance of the odd greedy big one.

Just a couple of memorable observations...
Years ago we had night matches on a local park fishing for some decent tench. I was getting a few, then the moon came around the shadow of the trees on the island and it went dead.
Another time I was on the river fishing for barbel, river conditions spot on but a big bright moon. About midnight the moon dipped below dense far bank trees and I caught about 10 barbel in the next few hours.

And numerous carp blanks 😮‍💨

Iv caught a few on the full moon , including my UK PB (common) however for actual sport I don’t believe it is the best conditions

In reply to Post #2
Agree 100%. I actually hate full moons. The one this week was in the air from before it got dark, right through til about 4am. Don’t mind them so much when there’s decent cloud cover, or when it’s so low in the sky it’s only out for a couple of hours, but the one this week was an all nighter. It’s even worse when it’s a big open water with no tree cover!

Lovely full moon Friday night, not a snosage though, love a full or a new moon tbh

I’ve fished a certain lake complex in France and kept an eye on the catch reports as best I can now for a good few years.
I’m I00% certain that it’s the week of the new moon that it always fishes well. I don’t think I’m the only person to have noticed this either as those weeks seem to get booked up first 2-3 years ahead. I’ve probably been there 10 or more times and the best 3 weeks I’ve had have been on the new moon in September.

I've posted this before, but what the heck.
A friend of mine paid for a whole year's worth of 'when it's best to fish, when it's not a good time to go', a company called Moonstrike I believe?
Anyway when his calendar turned up they, for some unknown reason, sent him the calendars for the previous seven years.
The syndicate we were fishing had a catch log kept in a shed at the lake.
Being a sado I sat there and went through every capture for the previous seven years, checking against the calendars.
The conclusion.
There was absolutely no correlation between captures and the 'best times' or the big commons coming out at their predicted times.
I have never paid any attention to moon phases since then.
Also, people have been saying that big commons get caught on a full moon since the big common in most lakes was a high double.

Love them both but it's not just about the moons, other weather conditions will make a difference as well.

i`ve always been more successful on and around the new moon - often brings a change in weather !

In reply to Post #12
And full moons tend to be flat calm and clear mostly, which is never that inspiring to me lol

In reply to Post #10
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post. It's much the same as the air pressure myth. It has almost become accepted as fact, when there is no scientific research to back it up. Indeed, a carp can swim a few inches high or lower in the water column and experience greater changes in pressure than any weather could cause. For context, every 10 metres of water is equivalent to 1 atm of pressure. A big weather front could increase pressure by 30 millibars, which is approx. 0.0296 atm. What's more realistic (my guess, not fact!) is that with moody weather comes lower light, which may make carp more likely to feed as those conditions are less conducive to being preyed upon by predators.

In reply to Post #14
Don't you come on here and start spouting your scientific facts about air pressure. 😂😂😂😂😂😂

In reply to Post #14
Quote: A big weather front could increase pressure by 30 millibars, which is approx. 0.0296 atm. What's more realistic (my guess, not fact!) is that with moody weather comes lower light, which may make carp more likely to feed as those conditions are less conducive to being preyed upon by predators

It's just the conditions that tend to come with pressure systems that do it imo. That big weather front you mention (winds and rain) brings with it oxygenation which leads to feeding. Especially after a period of high pressure which tends to bring calm/hot/humid conditions.

If you get big winds/rain under high pressure conditions you'll still see them having it.

That said, who knows how they experience the effects of atmospheric pressure? I have seen carp show up on the end of a new wind before it's even arrived plenty of times so they clearly sense things that we do not.

Ref moon phases. I do buy it (not necessarily a change to catchability, but defo a change in behaviour), and that's based on what I see during both the new and full moons. Nine times out of 10 you can literally see the increase in activity imo. I don't have the luxury of being able to plan my limited bank time around the moon phases but I'll always keep one eye on the calendar.

A carp I chased around for a few years only came out once a year, on the same moon (harvest moon), 4 years on the trot. Now I won't put my neck on the line and say it was defo the moon phase, but there was defo something about that short period that meant that carp was coming out.

In reply to Post #1
I had a long lay off from fishing because of work but when I got back into it I had access to a little farm pond with some good fish. Like many I can only go when I have time so never deliberately coincided any of my trips with moon phases and that's still the case. The fishing wasn't difficult but I noticed if I did happen to be there on a full moon I never caught and that went on for a few years before I finally had one on a very bright full moonso I'm definitely not sold on the full moon thing for big fish.

As a weekend day angler I go back to Jim gibbinsons writing - I go when the waters wobbly, meaning it it ain’t frozen and he panned to go - he went.

I find it the most pointless of theories in my own personal fishing - air pressure I think we can make better choices at the lake, as with weather and wind speeds but moon phases - just don’t work for me and reminded me of my commuter days when everyone said get the train line app - my trains ran every 20 mins, so knowing I was gonna miss one by 5 mins or knowing I had a 20 min wait was actually useless information to me. I don’t want to run off 2 mins early or stay another 10 - I just want to do what I do. It’s not that I don’t believe in moon phases or other things it’s just that I can’t really optimise any learnings without filling my head it’s more confidence sapping stuff.

Fishing when the waters wobbly sounds good to me

In reply to Post #15
😂😂

In reply to Post #18
I always interpreted Jim’s “go when the water’s wobbly” as meaning it’s best to fish when there is wind and waves, ie not when it’s flat calm, rather than referring to going when it’s not frozen with a lid on it lol 😂

In the very early days of my Carp fishing I used to fish a water that was good for runs, lots of runs, give it a full clear moon and you'd be lucky to get a bite, so that always stuck in my mind. Over the years I've not found them kind, in France I found Grass Carp to bite when others wouldn't. Guess it's just ingrained in my head now.
On a U.K water in the depths of winter with a full moon & frost, lit up like daylight, I had Chub after Chub, but no Carp, the next day with a bit of sun numerous Carp...hmm
Just grateful for the bites.

Go fishing when you can go fishing, lots of us don't need much of an excuse to knock it on the head. In the past I've been as guilty as anyone to find an excuse not to go. Nowadays I'm disabled with not as many days ahead of me as behind me and I intend to get out whenever I can. I've caught nice fish on full moons but just as many in dark nights. With a bait in the water you always have a chance sat Infront of the Tele no chance.

In reply to Post #22
Hear hear. On one of my syndicates, people will hear through the grapevine and group chats that "it's not fishing very well" and stay home. That is exactly when I want to go fishing. I might be there when it inevitably does begin fishing well and it means less pressure. Not to mention there's a good chance it's total waffle. Strange to me that people stay home because of that, but perhaps they're looking for an excuse to not feel bad.

As for weather conditions, I regularly check the weather... so I know what to expect and what to pack. I am probably more confident if the weather is moody for the reasons I described in the earlier post, but I don't let that decide if I'm going. As you say, you definitely won't catch sat in front of the telly...

Over 50 years ago (when I was very keen) I did some "research work" to get some "Statistics" using all the fishing papers I could get my hands on, mainly angling times and anglers mail etc and wrote down all the carp captures in a book and made a list of any size, and "big ones" etc along with the dates or as near as I could get it.

Then checked the dates of the captures with Moon phases and after a good few months and I kept adding more captures to the results, one thing was notable, it did not make any difference what the Moon phase was, or if the bigger fish came out at a particular phase of the Moon, carp were caught just as regualry on any day. No specific Moon phase was any better than the other

Air pressure did make a difference though, but, with doing the captures of the whole country It was too much hard work to do, air pressure could be low in the North and higher in the South or vice versa, so basically, I had to just look for captures that was pretty local about 50 miles away.

Years later. when "Carp Talk" was on the go, it made life easier so I repeated the exercise, and I got the same results, the evidence showed, it made no difference what the Moon Phase was.

I have had a pond in the garden with some carp in for over 25 years which I raised from spawn from one of the lakes I fish, I can never fathom their behavour out, they do the strangest things and go against the logic of what we think they should be doing.

In reply to Post #20
Interesting, I always thought he just meant go when you can and the water isn't frozen. Back then lakes were frozen way more often than nowadays.

In reply to Post #24
That's interesting Zack because Simon Crow always said that he used data from Carp Talk and it was obvious the full moon had a positive effect. Go figure.....

In reply to Post #26
Not from personal experience but from what I've read it's a new moon rather than a full moon that makes a difference

In reply to Post #26
I can recall that, long time ago, but what makes it interesting is, despite that, he has a video on Youtube discussing it, and he claims he is not sure the Moon does affect carp captures, this video was released in November 2025...Carp Talk stopped being printed in 2018. Plenty of time to change your mind!

And because he caught his big English "49" and it coincided with a "New Moon" he thinks their is more to it now. But the question to ask is, when did other anglers catch it, did those captures coincide with a "New Moon". if not, it puts the theory of a single catch out of the window. And what about all the other big ones in the lake, when was they caught.

If you Google it, you will find: -

"Catch Data: Large-scale analysis of carp capture data (such as UK studies evaluating thousands of fish over 30lb) shows an even, random distribution across all four moon quarters with no peak productivity tied strictly to a new or full moon"



Which is basically what I found.

I've personally found on 1 lake out of everywhere I fished there was a noticeable difference and that was the new moon period.
I think the whole big moon big common is just more people go fishing so more carp will be caught and obviously big carp