The Solunar Effect: Sun & Moon Tips for Better Bass Fishing

If you’re an experienced angler, I bet you’ve looked at the lunar (moon) and solunar (sun and moon) tables in magazines or newspapers or online and wondered what value they have. Do they really work? Can they teach us anything about fish and game behavior?

It’s likely that you’ve had a conversation about these tables with a fishing friend that went something like this:

• You: “Do you pay attention to those ‘peak times’ tables?”
• Fishing Buddy: “Not really. For me, the best time to fish is whenever I can. I can’t pick and choose when I go. I’m too busy for that!”

Of course, that’s flawed thinking. It’s precisely the anglers who can’t go fishing at the drop of a hat who should do all they can to make sure they’re on the water when the odds are in their favor. Leave it to fishing guides and tournament anglers to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fishing conditions. They truly have to fish when clients or tournament organizations demand they be out there. The rest of us are usually lucky enough to do a little picking and choosing about our fishing time. But even guides and tournament anglers have much to gain by studying the impact of the sun and moon … assuming the tables and charts are worth the paper or pixels used to publish them.

SOLUNAR TABLE AND FISHING

Lunar and solunar tables are not new, and predicting the path of the sun and moon is almost as old as mankind. Astronomers and early man have long associated moon phases with things like the tides and animal activity.

However, it wasn’t until the 1930s that outdoorsman, naturalist and writer John Alden Knight started to connect solar and lunar phases to fish behavior. He initially referred to it as his “inland tides” theory in 1935, but since tides are caused by the sun and the moon, he decided to combine the words “solar” and “lunar” and called it his “Solunar Theory.”

In a nutshell, Knight’s Solunar Theory is based on the idea that fish (actually, all wildlife) are more active during certain positions of the sun and moon relative to that fish’s position on the Earth. The sale of his Solunar Tables saw Knight and his family through the Great Depression and beyond. And those same tables—or those created and marketed by later rivals—have led many anglers and hunters to greater success outdoors.

After Knight’s death, an outdoorsman named Dan Barnett began publishing “Dan Barnett’s Fishing and Hunting Times,” again predicting peak fish and wildlife activity. He highlighted solar events, and his tables were popular but lacked precision.

SOLUNAR BASICS

Knight identified certain key periods that occurred in each 24-hour cycle. He called them “major” and “minor” periods. The major periods were when the moon was directly overhead or underfoot. Minor periods occurred when the moon was rising or setting. The strongest periods of each month were the full and new moons.

This is simple, and you might not need a sophisticated table for that. You could look up the lunar cycle and get a pretty good estimate of when those things would be happening on your part of the planet, but it would be very general.

Adding the sun’s influence on fish to these early tables was essential. After all, the sun is the engine that drives all life on Earth. If you were to say that bass tend to feed when the sun (a) rises and (b) sets and (c) in the middle of the day (especially in winter) and (d) the middle of the night (especially in summer), you’d be onto something.

Doug Hannon’s “Moon Times” is another popular and highly regarded resource for leveraging the natural influences of the Earth and moon. The late “Bass Professor” was focused on trophy bass and believed strongly that the full and new moons were the most impactful periods. Like Knight’s, Hannon’s system narrows key feeding windows into major (moon overhead and underfoot) and minor (moonrise and moonset) windows that typically last one to two hours.

MORE IS MORE

In 1986, fishing writer Rick Taylor came out with his “PrimeTimes,” certainly the most sophisticated and precise solunar predictions available to date. Taylor maintains that not all full moons, new moons, sunrises, sunsets, noons and midnights are equal. He factors in the diurnal certainties of the sun and the Earth’s 24-hour spin with the daily variances of the moon to bring greater sophistication and precision to his work. After all, the moon passes over our heads 45 to 60 minutes later each day. That’s a variance that the most basic tables do not consider.

Rather than adopt the inaccurate doggerel that has hindered or obscured much of the useful solunar work over the past century, Taylor identified seven periods that influence bass each day. These include dawn, noon, heat of day, dusk, midnight, moon overhead and moon underfoot. His recommendations and predictions are more practical than they are celestial, offering real-world value rather than crystal-ball hype.

Dawn and dusk are powerful drivers for foraging, especially if the bass has a visual advantage over its prey. Noon can spark a plankton bloom, triggering feeding activity all over a body of water. Heat of day is when the sun has maximized its daily impact and is a positive in cool or cold weather but generally a negative in summer. Midnight can be a primary driver of nocturnal feeders or of all fish in hot weather. He maintains that “moon overhead” and “moon underfoot” are typically most productive during stable weather.

Those are solid words to fish by even if you’re not interested in looking at a chart. However, what a quality solunar table does is calculate and calibrate all those factors so that you can home in on the exact times to be on the water. Taylor also gives each day a score from 0 to 100 so you can tell immediately what potential it might have … “solunarly” speaking, of course.

But it’s the hour-by-hour or minute-by-minute calculations that are most valuable. We all have favorite spots to fish—that point where we hooked our personal best or the creek where we won the club championship. Who doesn’t want to be there when the bass “wake up” and start eating?

CONSIDER OTHER FACTORS

Does slavish adherence to even the best of the solunar tables guarantee more and bigger bass? Of course not. On any given day, the patterns of the sun and moon are just a few of the factors that affect our fishing. Weather patterns, water clarity, water temperature, current and a whole slew of other things can be far more influential at times.

It’s also true that a bass is a living, breathing creature with a brain all its own—even if that brain is the size of a pea. Just because conditions are “right,” it doesn’t mean that a particular bass is hungry or feeling well or willing to chase after your offering. All the solunar tables can do is predict when the sun and the moon are best aligned to influence behavior such as feeding. The rest is up to us … as I hope it always will be.

PICK YOUR MOMENT

Ultimately, the solunar theory is a lot more useful than most anglers realize. It’s not just for those lucky enough to pick their fishing days and times. It’s for anyone who wants to make the most of their fishing opportunities.

It’s even for guides and tournament anglers who don’t get to pick the days and times they fish. They should use the solunar tables to put themselves in the best spots at the best times available to them. If they truly believe one area has the greatest potential for numbers of bass or large fish, doesn’t it make sense to be there when it has the greatest potential to produce? That’s where the solunar tables can help even those anglers who must fish on certain days and at certain times.

Now, let’s go back to the dialogue that started this article, but reconstruct the conversation with what we’ve learned.

• Fishing Buddy: “Should I be paying attention to those solunar tables?”
• You: “Absolutely!”
• Fishing Buddy: “When?”
• You: “Whenever you go fishing.”

PRIMETIME PLANNING

• Give this top solunar tool a try this season.

Rick Taylor was a standout bass writer before his fascination with the impact of the sun and moon made him a full-time wildlife prognosticator. In the 1970s, his bass writing was everywhere—always with a focus on data and the scientific method, eschewing the assumed in favor of what he could demonstrate and support.

Taylor’s solunar products are available online (primetimes2.com) or as a smartphone app (“Ultimate PrimeTimes”). His "Astro Tables" booklet will fit in your pocket or glove compartment, while his "PrimeTimes Wall Calendar" can hang in your garage or tackle room. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into his theories and calculations, order his book, "How to Know When to Go."

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• This article was featured in the September issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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